Posts between 2018/01 and 2019/01 (436 out of 437)
Leipzig and 34c3
December in Leipzig is cold. The bus from Sarajevo was 20 hours, mostly overnight. The bus arrived at the airport an hour late, and I promptly got on an express train in the wrong direction. Eventually I made it into the city, and checked into the hostel which had entirely to myself for three days. I didn't even see any staff; I was given a door code to get in. Apparently people have other things to do around the 25th of December.
So do restaurant owners. None of the veg*n places I'd noted were open. I ended up spending the 25th in the central train station eating pretzels and drinking coffee, and enjoying the bubble of non-festive activities which managed to continue.
I'd thought about going to 34c3 buildup at the conference center, but never quite made it.
In between checking out of my hostel and checking in to a shared airbnb, I spent a few hours hiking around Clara-Zetkin park. It was cold but clear. Leipzig has a lot of green spaces, and I probably should have made time to explore more.
I went to the Congress Center on the evening of the 26th for the first time. Food options were not exceptional, but there was a vegan food truck on premises (Vegan Spirit). The food they served was really good, but as with everywhere else in the vicinity, overpriced. I alternated between this and supermarket supplies.
The Congress Center is huge. It has a rocket.
I signed up to be an Angel, went to some intro meetings, and registered for some Speaker Desk and Subtitling shifts. But when I went to pick up the first Speaker Desk shift I was told they were not and had never been recruiting (so the 30 minutes I spent there the day before being signed up to a thousand wikis and stuff were apparently a waste of time). When I went to do subtitling, they weren't expecting so many people and I waited around for a while before being assigned anything to do. I did one shift, but gave up with helping with anything after that. I got the impression you really have to be part of an in-crowd to actually do anything useful.
But mostly I hung out in the Teahouse, chatting, drinking tea, meeting random lovely people from Mastodon (thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi! This was great actually, I just occasionally tooted where I was and people just appeared. My favourite question of the week was "bist du rhiaro?") In between human interactions, I read Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation. I finished it as the teahouse was being torn down around me on the last day, reaching the last page in time to drop it in the top of the final box of books that had been packed up.
I'd been skeptical of the schedule before I went. I've developed a pretty normal sleep cycle over the last 6 months of having a Real Job. But I ended up giving in and staying until 2-5am in the morning every day. I sucessively had 6, 5 and then 4 hours sleep each night. Somehow, everything was fine. I did nap in the Teahouse. I love a conference where it's both acceptable and expected to find people napping all over the place.
34c3 did not have a Code of Conduct. I may have reconsidered going if I'd known that before, on principle. I just assumed.. I mean.. I thought everyone has a CoC these days. I thought it was common sense. I don't know what they're afraid of. At one point I heard a dude yelling at another dude "if you don't want a conference witout a code of conduct, don't come!" as if that solved everything. Wow. I hope the organisers get their shit together on that.
I got carried away the first time I went into a real (German not Bosnian) dm and bought a mountain of chocolate. I ate vegan currywurst (except with peanut sauce instead of curry), twice at Burgermeister (the kidneybean burger is 100x better than the seitan one) and had a fancy and very delicious not-quiche at vegan restaurant Symbiotica. And lots of pretzels. I spotted lots of kebab places which advertised seitan kebabs and vegan pizza, but didn't get around to trying any.
Leipzig's public transit is pretty good. The airport is small and pretty dead. Wouldn't recommend for long stopovers. The bus station is the side of a road, also no good for sleeping or hanging around. But it's near Hauptbahnhof, which is a wonderful place. A week tram/S-Bahn ticket is not particularly good value unless you're going to be using them three or four times per day. Otherwise you might as well buy the 1.90/4 stops or 2.80/1 zone tickets. I got a discounted 16EUR 4 day 34c3 ticket though, which was definitely worth it.
Anyway overall it was a good time.
I stayed at Congress past tear-down, then went into town for dinner. We ate mediocre Indian food at India Gate because I thought I'd read a recommendation of this place, but I think I got the wrong restaurant. Then I took a night bus to Munich, obviously went straight for a burger at Hans Im Gluck, and caught a plane (the last one I swear) to Malta.
Liz and I spent four days in Malta, without much of a plan. We stayed in Sliema and mostly took public transport around.
The bus system appears good outwardly, but actually is kind of a joke. They don't run to schedule, often sail by without stopping, come in clusters and then there are no more for an hour or more. Most stops have electronic signs which show the next bus due, but the bus may not show up at all and the sign will quietly move on. Anyway my point is, don't plan anything based on the bus schedule. It's cheap though; a ticket valid for 2 hours is 1.50EUR and more than once we accidentally or on purpose presented expired tickets to the driver and it was fine. The on purpose time was when my ticket expired whilst I was waiting 30+ minutes for a bus that should have come twice in that time, and I was all ready to argue about it, but I didn't have to.
When the Sliema to Valetta ferry isn't running, the best chance of getting a bus to Valetta is to walk to the start of the line in San Giljan. The bus was packed, and not even high season..
The night we arrived was New Year's Eve. We took the ferry across the bay to Valetta and wandered around. There were lots of street stalls, crowds, and a party atmosphere. In the central square was a stage and lightshow.
One one day we paid 10EUR for a harbour cruise. It lasted a little over an hour, and was pleasantly relaxing. The boat was small and sometimes the waves were big.
Another day, we paid 20EUR each of the hop-on-hop-off bus. We took the south route, and visited quite a few sights. Except at our last stop, we were the victims of an unexpected schedule change and ended up waiting for over an hour and a half outside the Ghar Dalam cave (where there is nothing) and eventually gave up and got on a regular bus back to Valetta. Of course, 5 minutes later the sightseeing bus went past. I was disappointed to miss the rest of the route, as it went around the coast, to the Blue Grotto and something else. We should probably have got up earlier, and not taken so long to have lunch, though.
We visited the ancient Tarxien temples, which are very old heaps of rocks. We saw lots of old fortifications, and Liz wanted to go in every church. I liked the Ghar Dalam cave, it has thousands of ancient animal bones.
We took a ferry to Gozo. The return crossing is 4.65EUR. Ir-Rabat aka Victoria, the captial, is about a 20 minute bus ride from where the ferry drops. I had plotted an alternative bus path around the island but we had learnt by this point to just take a bus when we saw it so our first stop was Victoria. By then we were ready for lunch, and we wiled away a little to long in Green Mood.
We went to the oldest temple remains in Malta, Ggantija. We didn't stop in the museum, and charged around the ruins in time to get the next bus. The ticket also covered entrance to a windmill, but we skipped it. We stopped at Marsalforn, and hiked around the coast to find salt pans. It took a long time to get there because Liz was distracted by everything. Awesome sea views. We debated a two hour hike to the Azure Window, but then a lady selling salt impressed upon us an urgency to visit the Citadel in Victoria. We missed the bus back by moments (thanks to mislabeled bus stops) and the next was in an hour, so we hiked for 1 hour 15 minutes intead. Through fields and around hills, it was nice to get away from the population centers for a while. We got to Victoria just before sunset and caught some views from the Citadel. We ate at the first restaurant we came across, before [an ice cream and] returning to the port for the ferry, and another bus, back to Sliema.
For our final day, I figured out we could fit in Mdina, the ancient walled city, Clapham Junction (ancient cart grooves) and the Blue Grotto, and get Liz to the airport on time. However the ferries to Valetta weren't running so the buses were overloaded. We ended up walking to San Giljan (the start of the bus line) and enjoying a leisurely brunch on the seafront instead. Then we bussed to Mdina and checked out the ancient city and St Paul's Catacombs, before returning to Sliema. I like a good catacomb. Mdina is pretty cool, with windy streets and no cars, though as it is actually still occupied it didn't feel quite as ancient as I hoped.
We didn't make it to Clapham Junction or the Blue Grotto, or the Hagar Qim temples in the end. I thought about trying to get out there after Liz left for the airport, but it would've been dark by the time I made it. I wandered around Valetta and ate good food instead.
My airbnb host in Malta expressed alarm and concern when she found out I am vegan. I hadn't gone there with particularly high hopes, but there were a few places on Happycow. So without further ado...
Valetta
Our first night in Malta was NYE and we wandered into Valetta to find it packed and bustling. We stumbled upon Soul Foods, who were able to squeeze us in at 1900 but were otherwise full. Soul Foods is really wholesome homemade food for omnivores. The vegan main was an ayurvedic dish of lentils and grains. It was really delicious and flavoursome. Liz and I split two raw desserts; chocolate 'salami' and carrot cake. I loved them both, but they were 'too healthy' / not sweet enough for Liz. More for me. Not cheap, but justifiably so.
Every time I tried to stop at Grassy Hopper, a veggie place, it was closed.
We found Theobroma, a rawvegan dessert stand. I had a spectacular chilli hot chocolate with homemade almond milk (cashew is also an option; and hot chocolates come in plain, orange or white too). We picked up a peanut butter cup and a hemp seed chocolate bar ('too healthy') to enjoy later. Everything is also gluten free.
Next to Theobroma is Pastahaus. We went in on Liz's instinct, and this was probably both of our favourite meals. They have a huge array of homemade pasta, and at least four without eggs. They understand and are happy to explain what's vegan, and persistently offered a vegan wine. I chose a pasta made from semolina and hemp, accompanied by an avocado and almond sauce. They have a vegetable curry sauce too, as well as basic chilli oil and tomato and basil ones which I suspect are amazing. We shared bruschetta to start.
On the way to the ferry on my final evening, I stopped by Gurag. This place was somehow just what I needed; it seemed attuned to my mood. It's an all-veggie 'hangout and bar'. The space is small and was busy and loud, but they have seats downstairs. Nobody else was down there, so I had sofas and a generally peaceful laid back space all to myself. The wifi doesn't reach there, so I read for a couple of hours. They have a lot of vegan options, but upcharge (50c) for almond or soya milk in the smoothies. I chose a traditional Maltese sandwich, which at a mere 3.50EUR was a whole and hearty meal, along with a peanut butter chocolate milkshake. I took two energy balls and an orange fig brownie to go.
Sliema and San Giljan
There are quite a few Indian and Asian restaurants along the Sliema waterfront. We didn't try any, but it's good to know they're always an option.
On a wander around the coast at Sliema, we stopped at a random waterfront place called Il Gabana, which had a falafel burger. The location was good but the burger was pretty bad.
We ate twice in San Giljan. I found Naar and Two Buoys Bistro on Happycow. The first time we went, Naar was closed, and the options in Gululu (a traditional Maltese one) were more appealing than Two Buoys, so we ate there. We shared an antipasti plate of white beans, sundried tomatoes and olives. Liz followed up with risotto, and I had another anitpasti option of a small aubergine and artichoke salad thing. And lots of Maltese bread. The restaurant is nice, and everything is very clearly labelled with allergens on the menu, but the food I ate in the end wasn't super inspiring.
We made it to Naar for brunch eventually, and I had an all vegan breakfast. Nothing I can't make at home, except past months in Bosnia make most of the ingredients unavailable to me so I actually haven't indulged in this for a while. Apart from everything tasting slightly sweet for some reason, it was great. Naar also have a vegan burger, salads, and various sides, all labelled. Good smoothie options. The location on the water is pretty fantastic too.
Marsaxlokk
This is a fishing village, so obviously most places specialise in fish. A few have veggie pastas, risottos, and most places have pizzas that can be de-cheesed. All of the restaurants are on the shore, and it's small enough that we could take 10 minutes to walk up and back checking all the menus before picking one. We ate at Matthew's; Liz had fish which came with an overabundence of sides (chips, salad, cooked vegetables, bread) which all appeared to be vegan and I helped with. They were pretty good. I also ate vegetable soup, which was really good. We sat outside, and it was windy, and eventually everything was covered in sand and grit.
Gozo
It took two buses and a ferry to get to the only fully vegan restaurant in Malta, and it was totally worth it. Green Mood in Ir-Rabat aka Victoria on Gozo (the north island) is a lovely space, serving customisable grain bowls, soup, juices and smoothies. It's comfy and there's wifi. Liz and I spent a little too long there when we arrived to Gozo. We also left with energy balls. Prices are really good; bowls between 5 and 7 EUR.
We ate dinner near the Citadel at It-Tokk; I had penne arrabiata with sundried tomatoes; simple but delicious. On the way back to the bus, I grabbed a dark chocolate ice cream from Vanilla because.. how could I not. They also have a range of vegan sorbets.
Travelling from Malta to Bosnia without flying seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, overall it was a good idea. I'm just really tired right now, the morning after.
Ferry 1: Valetta (Malta) to Catania (Sicily)
I took a 9 hour night ferry from Valetta to Catania. The ferry was called Barbara. Hi Mum.
There are two ports at Valetta. Forni was all closed up, and the one I wanted was Pinto (deduced from the office address on the Tirrenia website, not through any helpful where-to-checkin instructions). Pinta is at the very far end of the Valetta Waterfront, after all the shops and restaurants. The point that is labelled on the big wall maps as Pinta was dark when I reached it, and panic started to rise. I checked my GPS and backed up a bit in case I'd missed it. I hadn't. I charged forward again to look for signs or secret doors I might have missed. Aha! Tirrenia was at the far end of this particular structure, opposite to where it is labelled. A small printed sign directed passengers around a corner, through a waiting room and up some stairs. I entered a small office, where a smiling old man said 'Hello! We've been waiting for you!'. I'm not kidding. I was a good hour early at this point. He directed me to take a seat, and took my ticket and passport, and scribbled some things and typed some things, then printed a sticker with a barcode on it which went on the back of my ticket. Then another gentleman said 'come, I will escort you to the ship.' I felt quite important. We picked up another guy from the waiting room, and we were shown across the carpark to the ferry.
Turns out we were the only two passengers. The other was a pleasant Ukrainian man named Vlad. We had our pick of sofas in a very small room next to the cafeteria, where a few ferry staff were eating and the TV was blaring.
I went up on deck until we had cleared Valetta port. The stone walls and forts around the town were lit up and made an impressive sight. The sky was mostly clear, the moon almost full, and the stars on display. The further we got from land, the windier it got until I almost couldn't breathe. I leaned my head over the side, and felt like a dog sticking its head out of a car window, cheeks flapping. I felt as though if I relaxed enough, the wind could just take me. When I was thoroughly chilled through three layers of clothing, I returned to the sofa. All things considered, a whole sofa to myself was pretty luxurious. The boat rocked substantially for a while, but I think I slept well.
Catania
We arrived in Catania, Sicily, at 7am, about 30 minutes late. Mount Etna was looming, the sky was blue and pink, and the sun was already warm. Vlad seemed to know where he was going, so I followed him into town. I left him in MacDonalds, and continued down Via Etnea, taking in statues, piazzi, churches, columns, and dodging crazy drivers. I strolled through some gorgeous gardens, quiet in the early morning. I eventually found my way into Parco Gioeni, which over looks Via Etnea and the port and beach in the very distance.
I found some eduroam wifi, and discovered that I was already too late for the public bus to Mount Etna, as well as any more expensive guided tours; they all seemed to want to leave at 0830, and I finally got around to trying to plan my day at 0835.
Interlude: Open Street Maps app refused to open. I sat at a bus stop where there was eduroam for about half an hour trying to fix it, or find an alternative map of Catania. Eventually three reinstalls, plus booting it through happycow rather than directly brought it back to life. Panic over.
I charged on to the only vegan restaurant in the vicinity, Haiku. It appeared to be closed, though I arrived 20 minutes after the listed opening time. I sat down on the step and pulled out my phone to see if I could find some wifi, or decide where to go next. Then a lady arrived and rang the bell and was let in, so I followed. They were open after all, but no lunch until 12.
I settled in the back with power, espresso and a vegan tiramisu to start the day. The wifi didn't reach to the back, but I drafted plenty of blog posts and rested my feet, which were already starting to complain.
When lunchtime arrived, one of the waitresses described every dish on the menu to me in English, and was very proud of herself for doing so. They were all really friendly in there, and all the food sounded great. I had a carrot and pumpkin miso soup, with a pasty stuffed with vegetables and seitan. It was all wholesome and delicious. Two items from the lunch menu was 10EUR.
They have a really great looking pizza menu for dinner time, too.
It started to get really busy, so I packed up and left not longer after I'd finished eating.
To the beach!
There's a great expanse of sand called La Playa. It's protected from non-wheeled invaders by an enormous and hideous motorway however. I pressed on, hoping to hit upon a pleasant seaside or something soon. Instead, a lady pulled over her car and offered me a ride to the nearest accessible bit of the beach, fearing for my safety.
I paddled, and soaked my aching feet in sand and sea.
Soon it was time to head back in search of food again. I had three veggie restaurants shortlisted. They were all closed. I trekked the loop a few times to see if they'd open as 5pm approached. But this is far too early for Italians to eat; I came across some wifi and found they all opened at 7.30pm or later. Instead, I made my way to an Indian restaurant near the Vincenzo Bellini monument I'd spotted earlier. The signs and the outside looked kind of sketchy, but inside was quiet and clean.
I ordered way too much food. It was suspiciously cheap. Two pakora (1.50EUR), a samosa (1), aloo paratha (1.50), mung dahl (3), mixed vegetable curry (3.50), and cardamom tea (1). I took most of the dahl and paratha to go. I had a second cardamom tea; it was thick and dark and so so good. As I was coming to terms with moving my legs again, a friendly guy from Milton Keynes came in, picked up on my accent, and made conversation about travel while he was waiting for his to-go order. Then he insisted on paying for my food. I will pay it forward.
Stomach full and legs still jelly, I headed back port-wards, with two hours to go and expecting to have to quest hard to find the ferry. Because...
Ferry 2: Catania to Napoli
Italian ports. Are. A. Nightmare.
From prior experience I already knew they are a nightmare though, so I was mentally prepared. But it's still a nightmare even when you are expecting one. Catania makes Ancona look like a well-signposted walk in the park. I couldn't find a hint anywhere on the TTTLines or Carrenta websites about where to check in for the ferry. There is a small box by the port on Open Street Maps labelled 'TTTLines' so I headed there. This is absolutely not accessible to anything that isn't a car. I looped around, went back and forth, under train tracks, over train tracks, across duel carriageways and back, under and over some chain fences, through carparks, over a wall. Eventually I broke through and got myself on a road that led to the box on the map. The footpath quickly dwindled, and I pretended to be a car as I approached an automatic barrier. Fortunately a fellow human was supervising it; we failed to communicate for a few sentences until I waved my hands and said 'Napoli!' and he pointed me through: 'TTLines! Bus!'. In the distance I could see the box on the map, materialised as a real building labelled 'TTTLines'. I went inside. Mumble mumble.. 'Napoli?'. A lady told me this is the wrong office, and pointed at her blinded window: 'bus'.. When? I wondered. But then a white minibus pulled up. 'Bus! Bus!' said the lady. I ran outside. 'Napoli?!' got an affirming sound from the driver and he loaded me in. First we stopped at another TTTLines office, where I presented my ticket and passport, and got another piece of paper in return. Then a few more minutes, across the length of the sizeable port, and I was dropped at the ferry itself. Inside was an escalator and a reception! High tech.
The place was already buzzing, with a lot of very young children and old people. Also quite a few dogs. All of the sofas were occupied, though mostly by coats and luggage. I took over a table, two chairs and a powersocket as the next best thing. There was even wifi on this ferry, although I wasn't able to get any of my devices to connect to it. When it was time to sleep I relocated to slightly comfier looking chairs. I'd had my eye on a sofa occupied by a young couple with a small child who seemed likely to be heading to a cabin eventually.. but so did someone else, and he was sitting closer, so when they got up to leave he got there first.
Napoli
12 hours later, I arrived in Napoli.
In hindsight I should have made the effort to get out to Pompeii and Mt Vesuvious, but in the moment I thought this might turn out to be expensive, and stressful to get back in time. Probably would have been better than what I did do though.
Which was to wander around searching for vegan food. Everything on happycow was closed despite the listed hours. I ate leftover food from the night before in a park. The scenery was all nice, but every human I encountered was loud and abrupt. All restaurant staff looked like they were standing outside to scare people off rather than offer them a seat. They were often smoking and/or yelling at someone. I wandered in the sun for hours. I found myself in a horribly crammed touristy street. I got catcalled or approached by gross old men several times. Eventually made my way in the direction of the bus station, and collapsed at a table for a pizza marinara and an espresso, before the bus at 1530.
Bus 1: Napoli to Roma
This didn't really need its own section. It's three hours from Naples to Rome, and was uneventful and, in fact, quite on time.
Naples bus station is all outside except for a ticket office, which is presumably closed during hours one might want to sleep. It's near a large train station and shopping mall complex though. There are no signs to indicate which bay your bus will turn up to, so I positioned myself to see all buses that entered so I could then chase them down. There were enough passing Flixbuses for intermittent wifi.
Italian buses are strict about luggage and seatbelts. I usually cram my big backpack at my feet; because I have tiny legs it doesn't even get in anyone else's way. But they wouldn't let me on with it this time, I had to put it in the storage compartment.
Bus 2: Rome to Zagreb
I had two hours to wait at Rome Tiburtina bus station. I bought vegan supplies and downed an orange juice in the cafe there, and sat around for a while. This is another one where you have to keep an eye on entering buses to spot yours and follow it to the bay. There's an electronic screen, but it says nothing helpful (except the time). This time I repacked my laptop and food into my small backpack before storing the bigger one in the luggage compartment.
The drivers and many passengers were ~Croatian. I was already feeling more comfortable.
The drive was 12 hours and came in a little early I think. I had a double seat to myself, and slept almost the whole time. The first border crossing was at 5am, into Croatia; there was no stop at the Slovenian border.
Bus 3: Zagreb to Sarajevo
I had four hours to pass in Zagreb. According to the hours listed on HappyCow, the only place with vegan food open on a Sunday was Bio&Bio, a supermarket. I wandered through the center of Zagreb, enjoying a beautiful sunny morning. Market stalls were opening, and there were lots of people around. I'd been here before; it was familiar, but not intimately so.
At Bio&Bio I contemplated the hot drinks and smoothies menu, then wandered around the shelves to grab a few things for the journey. Some staff and photographers were doing a product photo shoot. I helped out by holding things for five minutes, and got a free matcha latte. Score.
Zagreb bus station is pretty huge (not like, Munich huge, but huge for a Balkan country). It has indoor bits and outdoor bits. Despite its size (too big and awkwardly shaped to keep an eye on all entering buses) there is nowhere to read which bay to expect your bus to turn up in. I eventually asked a human at the information desk. Fortunately it wasn't too busy.
There are loads of places to eat and drink coffee, or just slouch around. The toilets are 3kn (less than 0.50eur), and there's a note-to-change machine right by the entrance. There are plenty of money changers (and ATMs) inside the bus station, so I changed 20EUR to kn when I arrived. Open wifi networks are abundant, and all of the coffeeshops offer passworded ones too.
My bus ticket from getbybus.com said it would be serviced by Globtour or Centrotrans. I was a little nervous about this uncertainty. A bus labelled 'Croatia Bus' showed up and accepted my ticket, anyway. Since I was repacked into two bags, I put my big one in the luggage compartment, forgetting that we're now out of Italy and Flixbus jurisdiction, and not only would I have had no problem taking it to my seat, it also cost 8kn to stow it. Oh well.
This leg was 'only' 8 hours, but felt like the longest stretch of all. I thought I might get my laptop out since it was day time, but I immediately fell asleep, and slept on and off for the whole journey. It was a different route to the one I know between Sarajevo and Munich. Lots of mountains. We passed through Jajce just before it got dark, which has a fort on a hill and a giant waterfall. At the Croatian side of the Croatia-Bosnian border I was double-quizzed about whether I had drugs. I've been asked before a couple of times what I'm doing in Bosnia, and if I like Sarajevo.. but mostly nobody says anything at all. So this was new.
The absolute surge of joy I felt upon entering Sarajevo... I wanted to hug the Avaz Tower. I almost promised the city I will never leave again.. but stopped myself just in time. I'm probably outta here for good in two weeks or so. In any case, right now this is home.
Made an RDF exporter for aleph. Blog post coming soon. And some data modelling.
Went to yoga thrice.
Went to Karuzo \o/ it had been so long.
Wrote 1800 words of fiction.
Went on Sarajevo mini-adventures, to Kozija ćuprija (Goat's Bridge) and up Trebevic to the bobsled track in the snow.
My SD card suddenly ceased to function :o lost a week of photos. Mostly mundane, but 2/3 of the Goat's Bridge walk. (It stopped in the middle of taking photos on that walk).
Chilled and cooked and ate with Elizabeth and Marybeth.
Wrote a short storie about Evie Blue's first day at school.
Do any of the Python JSON-LD libraries make it easy to serialize a @context rather than just the data? All examples I can see which don't use external contexts just write it in as a string.
I'm on Season 2 of ToS. It's still a chore, but there are little things that make it bearable. The way Spock and Kirk look at each other, for one. Also every time Sulu does a countdown, and Chekov constantly claiming everything was invented in Russia.
I wrote 275 things on here. 173 were short notes, 102 were longer articles, and they comprise approximately 59,492 words in total. That's a mean of 162.99 words and 0.75 posts per day.
I wrote about 237 different topics, with the most common being travel (105), life (63), food (36), phd (34), thesis (29), hacking (27), Bali, Indonesia (25), week in review (24), vegan (24), linked research (23), nanowrimo (20), and sloph (19).
I also wrote (or contributed to) 3 academic papers:
I checked in 1,819 times. I spent the most time at home, which was 5 months, 13 days, 13 hours, 5 minutes, and 36 seconds, followed by 2 months, 10 days, 8 hours, 46 minutes, and 5 seconds on an adventure. I also spent 1 month, 13 days, 23 hours, 15 minutes, and 45 seconds in transit; 1 month, 17 hours, 31 minutes, and 56 seconds in my office; 17 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes, and 3 seconds out getting food; 14 days, 2 hours, 32 minutes, and 45 seconds at an event; 4 days, 23 hours, 10 minutes, and 5 seconds out helping with something; 4 days, 9 hours, 26 minutes, and 58 seconds out exercising; and was in a meeting for 3 days, 1 hour, and 28 minutes.
I visited 13 different countries and 25 different cities (/islands/regions), and travelled by plane, train, tram, bus, car, ferry, boat, scooter and foot.
Work
I worked remotely for W3C one day per week all year, in-person for OCCRP ~3.5 days per week for six months, and spent two months in a vegan kitchen for a cafe in Malaysia. I did two hours of remote consulting.
Code
This is my Github commit log:
Github counted 1,362 'contributions'. This includes 1,198 commits over 40 repositories, 17 of which I created (in 2017), and I opened 85 issues. I closed some too but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to count those.
My favourite part is the end of April when my thesis was due, and then I immediately went offgrid for a silent meditation retreat. Most other grey patches coincide with bursts of travel. November is full because of Nanowrimo. It sort of almost looks like I maybe sometimes had weekends though.
Here is the list of repos. I'm too lazy to link them. Some of these are private.
alephdata/aleph
alephdata/exactitude
alephdata/fingerprints
alephdata/followthemoney
alephdata/ingestors
alephdata/memorious
alephdata/xref
csarven/articles
csarven/dokieli-rww
csarven/ldn-tests
csarven/mayktso
Devcember/devcember.github.io
hreeder/botbot
linkeddata/dokieli
linkedresearch/linkedresearch.org
occrp/data.occrp.org
rhiaro/alephbox
rhiaro/as-ns
rhiaro/as2-reports
rhiaro/bookmarks-to-as2
rhiaro/dkdata
rhiaro/homeiswherethehammockis.com
rhiaro/indieweb-identity
rhiaro/ldp-ns
rhiaro/ldprints
rhiaro/observing-decentralised-web
rhiaro/occrpscripts
rhiaro/ofthemoon
rhiaro/olmparser
rhiaro/probe
rhiaro/profiles
rhiaro/sloph
rhiaro/tachyon-scanner
rhiaro/thesis
rhiaro/tmp-dokieli
w3c-social/social-web-protocols
w3c/activitystreams
w3c/ldn
w3c/Micropub
w3c/websub
Stuff
I acquired things on 855 occasions, and used 10 different currencies (EUR, BAM, GBP, USD, DKK, HRK, JPY, MYR, AUD, IDR). 492 of these occasions were food.
I logged 1,446 meals or snacks, an average of 4 per day. The thing I consumed most was coffee (471), followed by bread (363), vegetables (327), fruit (313), and tea (183). I consumed coffee on average 1.3 times per day.
January: adventures
I accidentally got a job in a vegan cafe, Wholey Wonder. It was delicious. What with CSers, the Wholey Wonder crew and my Malaysian Mum, I quickly accumulated a Penang family.
Chinese New Year is loud and on fire and constant and lasts for two weeks. I needed a break. I took the ferry to Langkawi, beachbummed, couchsurfed and slept on beaches. I finally got to put my hammock up between palm trees. I met GJ who came back to Penang with me. Various vegans came and went and on Mondays when Wholey Wonder was closed we tried to hike and go to further flung beaches.
On one such excursion I got stung by a jellyfish. My leg was on fire, I got a migraine, and threw up in the car. The Wholey Wonder crew rehydrated me and saw me safely home. I slept for 24 hours and was okay again. The itching lasted for weeks, and I still have a scar.
I met Isaac, who tried almost everything on the Wholey Wonder menu, and told me about Vipassana.
Wholey Wonder and the Penang vegan food quest continued to persistently distract me. bengo showed up and we did the Penang Hill Forest Challenge. I had some cooking and baking successes and failures.
February is full of celebrations in Penang. After Chinese New Year finale was Thaipusam and the balloon festival, and Kek Lok Si Temple light shows.
I met Dani and we found old men in a treehouse hidden in plain sight in the middle of George Town.
I put a call out for a ride to KL, and Krishen took Dani and I as far as Ipoh, and generously hosted us in his Mum's house for one night, and took us to visit some temples. On the way we had a flat tyre on the highway and had to wait for resuce. I took the bus the rest of the way to KL, and flew to Bali.
I promised myself I wouldn't make any friends or let myself get distracted in Bali. At the airport, I met Ninni, who was also writing her thesis. Hers was about vegan food, and motivations for diet change. We agreed to be thesis buddies when she got to Canggu.
The hostel I had booked for the whole month had bedbugs. They were very nice, and let me leave after a few agonising days. They fumigated the dorm and cleaned my stuff for me. I moved into a twin room at an eco yoga guesthouse with Ninni for a week. We cafe-hopped and ate fancy vegan food. Ninni's sister came, and I moved back into the hostel.
There were still bedbugs.
I moved into the dorm of the eco yoga guesthouse. I had pool access and a discount at their mostly-raw-vegan restaurant. Score.
I did yoga every single day. I learnt to do yoga sweating, in heat. I was almost making headstands unsupported by the end of the month. I learnt from a variety of different teachers.
I spent the last couple of days in the south of the island. This hostel also had bedbugs, but I noticed before getting into bed. The staff were awful. Four of us from the dorm moved to twin rooms in a hotel down the road. Instant new friends, English, German and Brazilian. Bad review for the hostel, who wouldn't refund us and accused us of lying.
I spent a few days getting a handle on Perth, before WWW2018. Good workshops, good chat, good vegan junk food. Constant gnawing in the pit of my stomach about the thesis. Wendy and the SOCIAM crew conspired to bring Sarven and I to Southampton in the summer.
I moved in with distantish relatives in the suburbs. There was not much to do but sunset runs by the beach and write. Also hiding in my room and crying for days. There was no way I was going to finish this on time. I asked Ewan for an extension. He said I could do it. I didn't do it. I did a bit. I cried some more. I watched Star Trek. I wanted to be sick. I tried going to different suburbs to work from libraries and cafes. I tried to hide my stress. I got to know my interesting and unusual second cousin Tim when I needed a break from crying alone.
No yoga, but ran every other evening by the sea.
Got baaaad RSI.
Mastodon became a thing.
I had expected to send my thesis off, then jet back to Malaysia. I managed the latter, but not the former. Ewan helped me concoct excuses for the graduate office.
Argh! The drama continues. I found myself homeless in Penang, before the Whole Wonders Tammy and Jon put me up in their tiny apartment and supplied me with a constant stream of hearty vegan food for a couple of days while I frantically alternated a few hours sleep with finishing my thesis. I handed it in two days late, and jumped in the pool.
I met Malaysian Mum for breakfast, then embarked on a ten day silent Vipassana meditation retreat on the side of Penang Hill. I didn't want it to end.
It did though, and when I found my voice again I took several fellow meditators back to Wholey Wonder with me afterwards. I made a few dreads, ate everything on the menu, then bussed to Kuala Lumpur. A few hours sleep, a few new bedbug bites, some Indian food and an interesting late night chat with a Syrian guy later, and I flew to Tokyo.
When I got to Dave's house it was late, and Dave and J were both dead to the world. Fortunately all his doors were unlocked. They awoke to find me asleep in the closet. Surprise! Dave and J looked after me in shifts. I made lunch ready for when Dave got home, so we could eat together before he dashed off again. I hung out with Mike, Nao and Zen for a little while. I returned to Dave's to find Juri making up errands to keep me out of the house. Eventually she let me in, and she had prepared a romantic, candlelit vegan dinner. We spent a lovely evening girl-talking, and the next day they both accompanied me back to the main station.
I flew from Tokyo to Venice. Venice was too expensive, so I met KitB and we took the bus to Trieste. We spent a pleasant weekeating and wandering in the sun.
I took the bus from Split to Sarajevo, started at OCCRP, moved into my little cheap flat, and fell in slightly love with the city the more I roamed.
I became pretty quickly overwhelmed with working 5 days a week. I didn't have energy, social or otherwise, to do anything but hide in my flat at weekends. And I wanted to see things.
I explored and ate and started yoga at Prana; I dug into learning some new tech, and about investigative journalism.
As arranged in April, I went to Southampton and Oxford to visit SOCIAM. No flights; it took three days to get there, via an afternoon and a night in Brussels to see my PhD bro Michael. I also got four hours to race around the sights in Frankfurt. Everything was late, but I made it in the end.
Sarven and I worked with bblfish and others to reimagine scholarly communication with a Solid-like architecture. I drafted ldprints. On the Friday we went to Oxford, joined forces with Timbl, Wendy, Nigel, Max, Jun and all manner of other cool people to discuss what we'd done over the week.
Net Magazine printed an article Sarven and I wrote about LDN; it came out that week, so I went out of my way to buy it from WHSmiths to show to Timbl. Ended on a high.
I spent the week carefully not tweeting about being in the UK. Then I surprise-visited Mum. We watched movies, and cooked lots of things. My wisdom teeth got infected again and I went to a dentist. I saw Grandma, and Polly, and met Dad for chips on the beach.
I returned to Sarajevo by bus, this time with four hours in Brussels across midnight. Not recommended. I managed to see quite a few London peeps, and eat quite a lot of London food.
I recommenced OCCRP (part time), and met Ishka the cat, who comes in when I leave my windows open.
At the last minute, I wizzed (get it? Wizz Air) back to the UK for a weekend to surprise Dave and J who were visiting Mum. It was wonderful. I took them for a day in London, then flew back.
I went with Edin and friends to Skakavac waterfall, and for a long drive to Sutjeska Valley and for a swim in an artificial lake. I tried krompirusa for the first time; my world changed.
Boudicca came to Sarajevo, I met Renee, and had the opportunity to put my hammock up between trees on Trebevic.
I applied for my Bosnian residency permit. I went to some of the Film Festival, parts of which were rained off.
I made some great food. I started hanging out with Elizabeth a lot.
Having spent the entire summer not thinking about my thesis, I thought briefly about preparing for the defense, but instead went to a weekend yoga retreat with Aida and others from Prana Yoga, on Jahorina. It was exactly what I needed.
I flew from Tuzla to Luton, and took a night bus to Edinburgh. I arrived bright and early in time for my viva. It went really well. I passed with minor corrections. I cried in Ewan's office. I ate a lot of Edinburgh, saw the Edinburgh crew, and returned by the same route. I brought my dinosaur onesie back to Sarajevo, tied around my waist for the flight as I had no baggage allowance.
I celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with Elizabeth and friends and pancakes.
I panicked about my thesis corrections. I pulled an all-nighter. I got a 24 hour bug, vomited my way through the last of them, and got most of them to my examiner before he got on a plane to Australia. They were approved. I filled in forms, finally wrote my acknowledgements, and got the thing printed in time to register for November graduation.
I spread my work days out so I could take a long weekend in Copenhagen. By long weekend, I mean I took a bus from Wednesday evening to Friday evening (via Berlin, including a ferry); stayed with Ninni from Friday night to Monday evening, walkingandeating; then returned by the same route from Monday evening to Wednesday morning. Ninni had a party with like 100 people to celebrate her Master's thesis. It felt like a party for my thesis too, even though I didn't know anybody there. The bus to Berlin (and back) didn't have a working toilet, and most of the service stations in between cost 50-70c. This was particularly inconvenient as I was travelling between two non-Euro countries, and wasn't carrying any Euros.
I got my Bosnian residence permit.
My Mum and Julian graced me with their presenceinSarajevo. They tolerated sofabeds and spiderfriends in my small flat, and we raced around the flea market, Trebevic, forts, the old town and the War Tunnel in a few drizzly days.
I bought winter clothes.
I went to a potluck at Prana yoga studio, and met Nick who introduced me to a Sarajevo running group. I managed to join them once.
I stayed in Sarajevo for almost the whole month. Nanowrimo is why! I wrote over 30,000 words of a new novel draft, Of the Moon. I'm pretty proud of that.
The Social Web WG took ActivityPub to PR. At last.
My database was broken for two weeks. Nobody noticed but me. I kept logs on paper.
November was also marked by people leaving Sarjavo; Renee and Jason moved on for pastures new, though I more than expect to bump into them again.
I wrapped up the month by heading to Edinburgh (bus to Munich, flight to Edinburgh), meeting my parents, putting my hair up high and a funny robe on, and finally receiving my doctorate.
I spent the first few days of December in Edinburgh, eating my way around the new vegan food scene. And seeing friends I hadn't seen for a while, and may not see again for another.
I boxed up the tigobird, and took him on the train to my Mum's house. There I spent another couple of days, saw my Grandma and Naomi and Tizzy.
After a brief jaunt to London, I took a bus to Ghent, where I spent the day, then on to Cologne, then finally back to Sarajevo.
The Social Web WG had its last meeting, and I published Social Web Protocols as a Note.
A cold, snowy, static two weeks later, I took the bus to Leipzig for 34c3.
After that, a bus to Munich and a flight to Malta, to ring in the new year with Liz. By 'ring in the new year' I mean we watched a movie in bed til we fell asleep, then distant fireworks woke me and I woke Liz so we could run to the balcony, see some brief flashes across the bay, then went straight back to sleep. Perfect, really.
In 2018, I will live out of a 45L backpack. Anything that doesn't fit, doesn't come.
My goals are to visit the following countries, and spend at least two weeks in each:
Albania
Bulgaria
Czech Republic
Estonia
Greece
Hungary
Lithuania
Latvia
Macedonia
Montenegro
Poland
Romania
Serbia
Slovakia
Turkey
I'll probably pass through or make a shorter visit to:
Austria
Croatia
Finland
Slovenia
And I might make it to (or these might wait til 2019):
Georgia
Moldova
Ukraine
I aim to take zero flights, except in emergencies. Hopefully there will be no emergencies.
I will do at least one more Vipassana meditation course.
I will make my travel blog function as a travel blog, and include pretty route mapping, and an interface for certain people to be able to figure out where I might be next, and when I'm free to work.
I'm going to eat more consciously. This means eating things that make me particularly happy, or are good for me (these two often overlap, but not always). I'm not going to stress about spending money on healthy/happy food, but I'm also not going to spend money on non-healthy/happy food. I'll err towards going without rather than eating crap. I'll eat slower, and not overeat. I'll reduce waste associated with food, so I'll eat in rather than takeaway, where possible, and hold takeaway food in my hand rather than have it wrapped in a bag or a napkin if it makes sense. Eating or drinking coffee in rather than taking away also slows the process, heightens the importance of my surroundings, and increases the likelihood of new acquaintences.
I will write the endings to Milo's World and Of the Moon.
I will write one shorty story a month at least. These may or may not make it onto the blog.
I'll finish a draft of Quest for Brothers, my 2010 nanowrimo.
I expect my Fairphone One to give up the ghost this year. I'm going to try really hard not to replace it. That means if you communicate with me on WhatsApp and nothing else, you need to find something else (Signal, email and Twitter will work, in that order). If you have any decent pointandshoot camera recommendations, or a non-phone device that functions well as a map/GPS, let me know..
ActivityPub and WebSub went to REC this week and the work of the Social Web WG in general has been getting a lot of attention, including AP making it to the top of hackernews. There are lots of good comments, but of course it's the negative ones that stick around when you release your babies into the harsh wilds of the Web for the last time.
There was a lot of conflict inside the SocialWG, and a lot of compromise. The comments that irk me the most are the ones that suggest we made decisions on a whim without thinking about things at length, or ignored prior art.
Sure we standardised multiple ways of doing similar things, but the decision to do that came only after much wailing and gnashing of teeth* and faced with the prospect of not standardising anything at all in this space. Or alternatively one- to two-thirds of the group meeting with suspicious accidents in lieu of consensus. It wasn't for funsies. We weren't trolling implementors. We were just trying to cope.
Anyway, what reassures me in the end is that, as we could never make everyone happy, at least we've somehow succeeded in making nobody at all happy.
The art of consensus™.
* and over a year of work, dozens of telecons and several face-to-face meetings around the world often at participants' own expense, and not a little yelling.
BY THE WAY anonymous internet strangers, if you are upset and confused about decentralised social networks but (and this part is important) don't want to be confused any more, and maybe even are implementing some things or at the very least skimming the specs a bit, do come on over to #social channel on irc.w3.org where we're all still hanging out and willing to help.
This stuff is complicated and distressing... trust us... and we (the Working Group and proximate communities) went through a lot of shiz so hopefully you don't have to.
If IRC isn't your thing, most of the editors and implementors are willing to help out to some degree, and you can track down contact details starting in the metadata at the tops of specs.
We do have lives though and most of us aren't being paid to work on this stuff, but we stick around because it's important to us, so please be patient and considerate too.
This weekend I went to Mostar with Elizabeth and MB. We took the 0707 train from Sarajevo on Saturday morning. The pinky sunrise was softened by the already accumulated smog, which obscured our view from the train for at least thirty minutes before we finally crawled out of it in the mountains. The smog was still waiting on Sunday evening to greet us on our return. So.. it was a good idea to go away this weekend. Mostar was bright, clear, and less cold throughout. And the colour of that water!
Officially the train arrives into Mostar at 9am, but it was after 0930 when we got there. Between three of us we paid 46km (23EUR) for an apartment a hop and a skip away from the old town. Our hosts picked us up from the train station.
Mostar is small, and at least as battered by the war as Sarajevo if not more so. Abandoned buildings are striking.
We went to see the famous bridge of course, and had coffee looking over the river. We went to the Hammam museum (15 mins, 4km) and inside a mosque beside the river and up the minaret (12km), which was super cool. The Bridge Museum was closed. Old town is nice to wander around, but packed up pretty early. It's not tourist season I guess.
After a nap, we hiked up to the controversial cross on Hum Hill. Instead of taking a path or road around the back of the hill, we charged straight up the Mostar-side, which was rocky and steep and probably there weren't landmines but also it was a sniper stronghold so you know. Good views of town. We returned via the road, which took longer but was less perilous.
Veggie food was not easy to find. Nowhere even had krompirusa. It was on the menus (but spelled krompirača??), but nobody had it. One place managed to dredge up some vegetable mush and rice for me. I ate the apple part of a tufahija (baked apple) and the others ate the cream. Turkish delight and halva were abundant. This was a high sugar weekend. We also drank a lot of Bosnian coffee.
Except the next day! We headed to Teco, since it's listed on HappyCow (two other places are listed on HappyCow for Mostar; one we couldn't find and the other was clearly under new management and only had pizza). Teco is further out and by the university campus, so it was a bit of a walk. They had a vegan burger (ask for yoghurt to be excluded), three vegan cakes and a wide selection of smoothies, plus soya milk for coffee drinks. The have a glass-surround front which heated up like a greenhouse. We stayed for five hours soaking up the sun and reading. The music was also good.
I left a script running overnight and to start with the sound of my laptop fan was annoying, but then I reshaped it to feel like I was falling asleep to the sound of the sea.
The remainder of the crew who have not been turned into papier-mache blocks must distract the invading aliens with sensory overload. Bones drugs one up. Scottie gets one drunk. Kirk seduces the lady one. Spock is playing chess with one.
Some chips, some pizza, some pasta, some pancakes, some tacos, some beans, some coffee muffins, some curry, and a particularly good fried tofu and mushroom sandwich.
The tram to Ilidza, then a couple of hours walking to and around Vrelo Bosne, the mouth of the river Bosne. It's a beautiful park, tranquil in the mist and gentle rain. The water was deep and bright. The derelict once-fancy Austro-Hungarian houses that line the two mile strait to the park are gorgeous. Almost 8 miles of walking in total; GPS trace.
Damnit Jim, I'm a doctor not a well-developed character.
Season 3 and Bones hasn't changed. I am sick of his shit. Him being an asshole to Spock was funny for a few episodes but DUDE move on.
And as for the 'strange Vulcan physiology' issue every time Spock stubs his toe STUDY IT ALREADY ugh
This has been building up for a while, but what really did it just now was Kirk left Scotty in command and Bones is on the Bridge as usual for no fucking reason and Scotty's like "wow I dunno what to do, this sucks" and Bones is like "yikes oh well happens to the best of us" but when Spock is in command Bones spends the entire episode screaming in his ear because he hasn't immediately rescued the Captain even though Spock is clearly executing a well thought out plan at every moment.
Bones is racist.
But mostly Bones is jealous of Kirk's feelings for Spock.
Vegan discovery of the week: I wanted scrambled tofu but all I could find was silken, so I sliced gently and fried it (gently) and it spat loads but came out exactly like fried egg white \o/
Literally every time I register for an academic conference I have to email the organisers to request that the 'title' field of the registration form doesn't force women to declare their marital status, or non-binary people to pick a gender.
Like jeeebus just make it an optional field if you have to include it at all.
Today's random discovery in the course of data wrangling: Google translate tells me "imeiprezime" is Basque for "I am depressed", though what I actually needed to know is that it's Bosnian for "name and surname".
I'm also enjoying things like "obimovlastenja" -> "Insurrection... did you mean obimovlaštenja?" -> "perpetuation... did you mean obim ovlaštenja?" -> "scope of authority"
I wasn't charmed by Prague. It's nice enough, but I didn't fall in love with the city or anything.
I stayed in ArtHarmony hostel, a super nice plantlife themed place with lots of bamboo, and mezzenine sleeping platforms in the rooms instead of bunkbeds. It was quiet, the kitchen functions if a bit small, and the staff were friendly. I discovered too late they buy 1 EUR for 26 CZK (for guests only) which is by far the best rate you'll see in town. Internet was good, and common area plus a desk in the dorm were both good to work from. I'd stay there again.
I alternated laptop days with touristing, but it was so freaking cold I ended up more on the side of laptop. At least it was dry and sunny though. But oh god, so cold.
On the first afternoon I went for a wander, and found the TV Tower. It's 250czk (10eur) entry, and good views. I ended up at the top slightly after sunset, which was not optimal. There's wifi up there, sofas, and interesting chairs, so it's a good place to pass time without freezing to death.
I went to see Black Panther at a little independant cinema (chosen due to its proximity to a vegan restaurant).
I worked all through the weekend, with a little break to visit the old town. Of course the astronomical clock, the only thing that sounded particularly interesting to see, was shut down for repairs and covered in scaffolding. Otherwise there's gothic spires and fancy architecture and bright coloured buildings and stuff.
I had a full sightseeing day on Monday. It was so cold that when I wrapped a scarf around my face, the damp patch from my breath condensation froze into a solid block. The small block of scarf-ice was still preferable to the air directly though.
I walked along the river to the Castle. I didn't pay to go inside, but the grounds are extensive. The Cathedral is impressive from the outside.
I walked through Petrin Park and climbed the hill. There's a little funicular, which takes the same tickets as the regular tram, but I am committed to climbing hills unnecessarily, even when I can't feel my legs. Especially when I can't feel my legs.
There's an observatory at the top which was of course closed on Mondays. There's a big castle-y wall. I went up the Petrin Tower (150czk) hoping to catch the sunset, but I was early and it was crowded up there. There are two spiral staircases on top of each other, one up and one down. They're both exposed to the outside, and at that height the wind was bitter. Views over the city are always good though.
I took a different route back to see other parts of the park.
Then I got into bed for two hours to reheat and swore I was never going outside again.
That's pretty much it. I took the bus in to Florenc station, which is further north, about a 30 minute walk from the town center. I didn't stick around, but it looked like a fully-fledged properly-resourced bus station.
I caught the bus out from the Main Railway Station though, which is half way between town and Florenc but also just some signs at the side of a massive highway. The bus arrived on the opposite side to the one I was waiting, and I joined a bunch of other backback and suitcase wielding adventurers in charging across the road to catch it, at midnight. Not ideal. Will use Florenc in future (the ticket prices are always the same).
That was easier than expected. Though also more expensive than expected. I thought I could do two meals on 10-15EUR per day but had to quickly laugh that idea out of the window.
But there are enough vegan restaurants that I could eat solely at vegan-only establishments and still didn't try them all. There are about 6 Loving Huts. There's lots of Vietnamese food. Here goes:
Veganland
A stark, canteen-like ambience, but very friendly staff. There are a couple of Veganlands; I went to one in small mall, which didn't help with the atomsphere. It's a buffet (25czk/100g) as well as a fixed menu. The buffet food is mostly Asian style, vegetables, mock meats and noodles. Some good stuff, mostly kind of greasy and junky, but satisfying. It reminded me of the terrible-but-awesome Chinese food I ate in Penang, the likes of which I haven't had in a really long time. On one occasion I had the buffet for lunch, and took away summer rolls and sushi (from the menu) to eat later. I ended up eating them for lunch the next day, and they were all good.
The next time I went (it was the closest vegan place to my hostel) I had the mozzerella pizza and it was fab. All the HappyCow reviews said so, and they are right. It was the right size, and super cheesey. I also had 'homemade lemonade' which was just a syrup and they mixed it with sparkling water and this was a terrible idea.
They have some raw cakes, but they didn't look particularly appetising and I didn't try them.
Loving Hut
Loving Huts in Prague are buffet style, 24czk/100g, and similarly Asian fare. Actually very similar to Veganland. The fixed menu is different though. I tried pho and wonton dumplings and they were both great. I didn't try the buffet. The pho was way more filling than I expected.
The atmosphere, in the x location at least, was nicer than Veganland. Still pretty stark, but less canteen-y. It opened last month though, and there's no wifi currently.
Pastva
This is a good place to go for a fancy meal if you're feeling fancy. But they also have little one-person shelf bench things against one wall, with power sockets, so I took my laptop out and didn't feel bad about taking up space. I went around 9pm, as they're open til 11pm and I was killing time before a midnight bus.
All of the food looks great. I had gnocchi with 'salmon'. I'm not sure where the 'salmon' came into it, it seemed to be a sauce made from mostly carrot and onion, but it was really nice nonetheless.
People were raving about the tiramisu, but I didn't feel like it. They had some crumbly fruit cakes too. I went with a hot chocolate, which was great. Super dark and bitter, yet smooth, with cacao nibs on the top.
Forky's
This is a good-food and fast-food place in the old town. They have bowls of healthy Asian mixes, as well as burgers, kebabs and hotdogs. Good for a mixed crowd, or if you don't want to decide what kind of lunch you're having until you get there. I had a hotdog, which came loaded with healthy toppings including kale! And good sauce. The fries were mediocre. I took a brownie for later.
The space is nice, with a vast downstairs area, lots of nooks, power and wifi. Would be a good place to work. Staff were super friendly.
Plevel
I planned to have a lengthy three course meal before heading to the cinema across the street, but the portions were so huge I had to skip dessert and content myself with a chai latte. I was sitting next to the cake cabinet though, and they looked fantastic. Not trying cake here may be my biggest regret.
I had a starter of pea guacamole with roasted portabello mushrooms, and a main of spaghetti with tempeh and tomato. They were so good. This is also a good place for a fancy meal.
Moment
I managed to spend 7 hours here on the last day after my hostel checkout. The menu is extensive and great, including breakfast options, and it was tough to choose, but the HappyCow reviews hyped up the seitan and cheese bagel, so that's what I started with. The HappyCow reivews were right. A huge chunk of burger-y seitan, and a huge chunk of melty not-cheese, plus a heap of salad and pickles. They were out of bagels, but the seedy bun served its purpose. I bet their other burgers and quesedillas are amazing too. The espresso was great.
I got 'homemade lemonade' here too which was also syrup with sparkling water argh, but better than at Vegan land cos they also packed it full of lemon chunks and fresh mint. But yeah, must stop getting lemonade in Prague, it's not Sarajevo.
I progressed to waffles, which were accompanied by a dollop of interesting cream, and shredded apple and pear, and sliced banana, drizzled with chocolate sauce. Pretty good. They have pancakes too. The yerba mate came in a proper mate cup with a metal straw.
I took a tofu 'egg' wrap and a peanut butter brownie to go, for next day's bus. They got a bit squashed but survived the backpack well, and the wrap was excellent. The brownie was good, but could have been peanuttier.
Compared to everywhere else, this was the cheapest.
It was an excellent space to work. They have loads of seats, power and wifi. Staff were nice, and it was definitely attracting an alternative sort of crowd. Also dog-friendly, and I was much entertained by various canine vistors over the afternoon.
Puro
I spent a few hours over lunchtime here. There's not much seating, but another person sitting alone let me share their table. There's wifi and power, and also a few shelves of groceries.
The food is good, wholesome; soups, burritos, wraps, quiches, and a good selection of cakes. I had an excellent spinach and tempeh quiche, plus almond latte and lime cheesecake.
The Sweet Secret of Raw
Cakes! Not strictly vegan cos they sweeten some things with honey. But all raw, all pretty expensive, and all amazing. I asked the waiter for her favourite and she directed me towards something smooth and creamy with two layers of different chocolate base, and a vanilla-bean pod filled cream layer. It was gooood. I also had a chai latte, which she cautioned me was 'spicy not sweet'. It was.
Comfy seats, but not loads. Wifi and power!
MoMo
A very small place, with vegan cakes and serious coffee. Only a couple of seats which were occupied when I got there, so I took coffee and cake to go. A chocolate fruit cake, and a big slice at that.
Vegan's
In a convenient tourist location, close to the Castle. Has a lot of veganised traditional Czech food, so I was determined to max out on that. I ate a three course meal which was far too much food (half size of each course would have been perfect) and I didn't eat dinner that day. Three courses plus tea was 24EUR :o But it was great.
The starter stood out from HappyCow reviews, and sounded light, and involved tempeh: bruschetta. It was a plateful though, much bigger than expected, and really delicious.
I had stuffed cabbage for the main. It was rich and filling and delicious. And so was dessert - traditional dumplings. They were filled with prunes and covered in a sticky jam sauce. So heavy. I could hardly move.
Also a nice space with upstairs and downstairs seating.
I'm sitting another 10 day Vipassana course this month.
I thought I'd sit another complete one, then attend my next as a server. But they're short of servers for this location, so I'll be a server this time after all. This means a little less meditation and a little more chopping vegetables. Which.. I'm greatly looking forward to.
Just mention that you are planning to travel between any two destinations in Europe within earshot of me and you will get immediate unsolicited detailed advice about all available bus routes, times and prices, and in some cases the comfort of any bus stations you might need to wait around in.
I dunno what's up with Twitter in firefox the past few days but it's making my fan whiirrrrr and crashes every time I click on a tweet. It's fine in Chromium.
Probably a sign I should get off twitter and do something useful anyway.
I get home from a hard day of completely offline touristing and I just wanna see what happened on the internet before I go to sleep but oh no my twitter account is locked because I exhibited 'automated behaviour that may violate the twitter rules' like what I literally haven't been near a computer all day, is that the problem??
And now it wants a phone number but my phone is dead and I don't want to give them my number anyway grumble
For what it's worth, Twitter restored my account after a couple of days of looping through 'help' forms. Initially I was supposed to put a phone number in to restore it, but it wouldn't accept a Bosnian number. Each time I filed a support request I'd get an automated email telling me something I already knew, which I could reply to, which triggered another automated email telling me something else I already knew. Eventually I got one that said:
Your account is now unlocked, and we're sorry for the inconvenience.
Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake.
I couldn't figure out what twitter rule I could possibly have violated (except maybe using a VPN left a flag?) and nor did they answer my appeals for why a Bosnian phone number is considered invalid.
I mostly worked and cafe-hopped, and did all the usual touristy things when Naomi came to visit. The weather of course was beautiful, right up until it was time to go outside. But we braved the rain, and walked a lot.
Along the river, and Margaret Island.
Through the city center, Parliament (supposedly designed to look like Westminster? I sort of see it, but not all the way), the German Occupation Memorial, and counter-monument to Holocaust victims.
We went to the Aquincum museum, with Roman ruins, which is not usually open in the winter or bad weather, but we went on a public holiday by chance so it was both open and free to enter.
Stuff at the top of various hills. The castle, Fisherman's Bastion, the Liberty Statue.
While I was there I went to three thermal baths. Szechenyi, the biggest one, with many indoor and outdoor pools of different temperatures. Being outdoors in the hot water surrounded by steam was awesome, but deciding to get out to go somewhere else was horrible because it was bloody cold outside. Rudas is smaller, super touristy and super expensive. We went on a Saturday afternoon on the holiday weekend and it was packed. The draw is a 'panoramic jaccuzzi pool' on the roof which was very underwhelming and not really warm enough. It snowed a tiny bit while we were up there, but really we were just cold. One evening I went to relax at the more local (therefore cheaper and less busy) Veli Bej.
It was pretty nice and there are many things I'd like to come back for, to eat, mainly.
So many good options, for eating in, takeaway, and vegan groceries, I almost regretted getting a flat with a kitchen. In no particular order...
Vegan Love
Junk food and proud, a variety of burgers, not-dogs, salads, macaroni cheese and donuts. Delicious and fast, and pretty cheap, but cramped and busy.
Las Vegans
A food truck pretty close to where I was staying. They had a ton of different burgers and I wanted to try most of them. They also have smoothies and mango lassi. It's in a little street of foodtrucks which are open late, so it's a good place to go in nice weather with omnivores; something for everyone.
Tokmag
Sandwiches, soups, salads and burgers. The 'chips' are thin-sliced potato, more like crisps. Nice soft burger buns, easy to eat. Soup was good too, and I had a 'cream cheese' sandwich which was kind of boring. Only two seats, so one time I went we had to stand and juggle the food because it was pouring with rain outside. Good quality food, and close to attractions.
Vegacity
If I ran a vegan restaurant, the kind of food I'd serve can be found at Vegacity. A vast array of pre-made stews, soups, delicious mush, fried things, salads, sushi, vegetables, brightly coloured burgers, rainbow of smoothies and an excellent cake selection. I tried to read the signs, but then just pointed at what looks good. There are two floors of seats, and wifi; I hung out here quite a lot. I should have more food photos, I don't know what happened to them.
Naspolya Nassolda
Raw cake, breakfasts and snacks. Stopped for good coffee and a few hours working. Not a lot of space, but it wasn't busy. Would return for interesting granola.
Vegazzi
A pizza foodtruck in the courtyard of a bar. All very hip and lively at night. And omg the pizza. Amongst the best pizza I've ever had, with an interesting selection of toppings. Sweet potato and chestnut, with vegan mozzerella added, a little combo of sweet and salty, was perfection. The mushroom one also rocked hard. I tried everything on the menu over two visits with other people. All pizzas very structurally unsound. No boxes to takeaway; eat it on the spot or risk it disintegrating in the street.
Both times a pizza was delayed because of an 'accident' (I think they ate it, who could blame them) or severely misshappen and came with an offer of a replacement? I said it was beautiful and ate it as it was. There are seats outside, but the bar (which also serves food) allows the pizza inside as well.
Great Bistro
Was... not so great. The first time I went what I thought was well before closing time, but the kitchen was finished. When I did make it to eat I found the menu limited and the prices extortionate. The food was presented to make it seem fancy, and it tasted fine.. I had a dish with porcini mushrooms which really just hold their own and are always amazing. The desserts were miniscule. I wouldn't go again.
Kosmosz
A good sized basement restaurant with a lot of Hungarian dishes translated to vegan. Everything I ate here was delicious, with standout goulash (not pictured) and a poppyseed pancake layer cake with a divine chocolate sauce.
Istvanffi
Burgers and fries which really fill the junkfood hole. Single-size burgers are small portions, but the prices match, so it's a great place for a substantial snack. There are also double versions, and all come with a variety of fillings. The fries are good, and they have fresh juice instead of soda. There's plenty of space and wifi, though the interior is stark and wasn't cleaned very well when I was there.
For some reason this is the burger of the the month that lingers in my mind and I really want to eat again.
Veggie Nyers
All raw cafe with pre-made dishes in the counter, and many good looking cakes. We took a mix plate between two (some of everything, and crachers) plus smoothies and cake. Definitely healthy and delicate. Some of the little scoops of stuff were so-so, some were super delicious.
Slow Foodiez
Pretty pricey and I wasn't convinced they were justified. I really wanted almond cream pancakes and gnocchi, but both times I went only limited menu items were available. The chickpea omelette was passable, and they have a nice selection of raw cakes. Need to figure out what times the main menu is available though.
Other stuff
I walked past this place after eating at VegaCity, which looks like it just opened. Didn't get chance to go back. There's a bakery next to Tokmag called Fill Good which I wish I'd found sooner. It's only takeaway, but they have a huge range of sweet and savoury vegan baked goods. I took a bunch for my road trip, but didn't get a good photo. It was all delicious.
Spent ten days on a snowy mountain in Austria serving on a Viapssana course. I helped to cook for and clean up after 165 people as part of a team of ~17. I got to stir giant pots with giant spoons and make volumes of apple crumble I've never seen before. Meditated at least 4 hours per day. Made wonderful new friends.
Got a ride to Vienna, then took a bus to Bratislava.
Compared to the size of the city, there are a lot of veg*n places to eat. Most regular coffeeshops have plant milks, and a surprising number have raw vegan cakes too. It's overall cheap.
Also quite a few places have vegan ice cream options. I got chestnut from Luculus 5 minutes after hopping off the bus.
Balans Bistro
Busy both times I went, this all vegan place has a pretty extensive menu. I tried the quesadilla which was more beans than cheese, but still good. A plate of some of the best chips I've had outside of the UK (high praise, y'know). Another time I was really not hungry enough for a full meal and I was definitely going to get soup or/and a cake, but the day's special was a pulled jackfruit burger.. It was great. I got fluffy creamy chestnut cake to go. My sister had the soup which was spicy and had avocado floating in it, which worked surprisingly well.
Vegan Kiosk
A foodtruck outside Tesco. Various burgers, drinks, bananabread. Interesting burger buns. Approved.
U Dobrozrutra
All vegan bakery; I wish I had been able to try everything here. They also had a few groceries like nut butters. I ate a poppyseed pastry. No wifi, but a few seats and coffee as well.
Foodstock
All veggie, mostly vegan. One of the only places I could find open on Easter Sunday, they have gyoza, ramen and falafel and hummus. Food quality is good. I ate miso soup and gyoza, which were covered in edamame and mushrooms. A small portion, but very delicious. They also have bottomless green tea.
Pestre
A French crepe place, with coffees and fresh juices. They can make vegan and gluten-free crepes from almond milk and buckwheat flour, and have vegan chocolate options. I tried one with banana and blueberries, and one with 'nougat' chocolate sauce. There's wifi and lots of seating; I worked here for a whole morning. The espresso is good too.
Re:fresh
Need vegan junk food at 2am? No problem. I didn't go at 2am, but it was nice to know it was an option. Mid-afternoon, it wasn't busy and was a fantastic place to work, with wifi and power. I ate an absolutely fantastic quesadilla, which was just packed with not-cheese. They also have some great cakes; on another occasion I had a burger. It's good solid (omnivore) pub food, with extensive vegan options, big portions.
Schoendorf Bio Cafe
An omni place off the main street. I just stopped in for a coffee but ended up staying for a hot chocolate and waffles as well. Small portions, on the pricey side, but the hot chocolate was really fantastic. Good for vegan breakfast or snack, not so much for lunch.
There were a bunch of places I tried to go to but didn't because they were closed when I was in the area, or were way too busy. Next time. Things I did in Bratislava that weren't eating.
I fell in love with Bratislava immediately. I arrived on a pleasant afternoon, checked into my AirBnb (a comically small apartment) and then went wandering, ending up exploring the castle at dusk. The city reminded me in ways of Edinburgh and in ways of Sarajevo, both places I felt like I could call home.
Close to where I was staying was the presidential palace, and a big inverted pyramid building. I went to see them, but like, don't go out of your way.
Walks along the river on both sides are pleasant. There are footpaths and parkland, not too much street hassle.
I climbed to the Slavin monument. It wasn't so far.
I took one afternoon to hike to Devin Castle, about 12km from the city. I mostly followed the river, having to detour on a couple of occassions. There was plenty of greenery, some parks that seemed to be crafted for nearby apartment blocks to enjoy, as well as wilder looking riverside beaches. THe walk took me along the top of an old quarry, through some vinyards, and eventually to the town of Devin. The castle itself is situated on the far side of town from where I emerged from the hills, and I was running out of steam and ready for lunch by the time I got there.
I bought a ticket just in time to have lunch in the grounds, as they close for a break for half an hour at 1300. Part of the castle (perhaps the interesting part) was closed for repairs. The rest was fairly pleasant, but pretty full of tourists. There's an exhibition about the history of Slovakia in one room.
The next part of the trek was to Dubravka, over the hills, about another two hours. From here, I caught a bus back into town.
When H arrived we embarked on another hike, this time to the distant Kamzik TV tower. You know I can never resist a tower on a hill. We took the elevator to the top, and stayed for a drink in the restaurant. It was pretty cloudy.
The whole area is a 'forest park' and it's huge. There are places set out for campsites, kids playgrounds, and exercise. There are a couple of bus routes running through as well. On the map and a couple of blog posts I saw 'cable cars' so we set out to find them. Turned out to be nothing more than ski lift, which I've never been on before, but I was swept off my feet before I could think too hard about it. It went pretty high, and pretty far.. probably ten minutes in total but it felt like eternity. H passed the time by telling me ski lift horror stories. When it finally ended, we walked around some lakes and tried to track down a bus back into town. We did not find the one I was expecting, but made it back eventually.
On the last day we took our luggage to the bus station, and were greatly interrupted by a marathon taking place. A long line of runners got between us and the road to the bus station for what felt like an eternity. When we made it though, we were delighted to find the storage lockers are free! Unheard of. You just push some buttons, set a secret code, and lock your stuff inside.
A trip to Bratislava is probably not complete without going up the UFO bridge. Well, maybe you can skip it. It was pretty expensive (7.40eur) for the observation deck; you can go to the restaurant for free but that's a 30eur/dish kind of deal. The views are good, and adorably it's the smallest tower to belong to the World Federation of Great Towers.
Early afternoon we took the bus to Vienna. Regiojet sometimes has the route for 1eur, but more commonly (and what we paid, buying the ticket 20 minutes before departure) is 5eur. Beats FlixBus's 7.50!
I feel an absolute certainty in my heart that I'll be back to Bratislava, some day, for longer.
There are quite a lot of options in Vienna, but everything is expensive, so I mostly bought groceries and cooked. But not always..
Vegan Anker
Anker is a bakery chain that's everywhere in the city. Regular branches have a few vegan things, but there's an entirely vegan Anker right in Stefansplatz Metro station. There are a couple of tables, and it's around a corner away from the bustle of the main station, so a nice place to hide away and pass the time. It's also really cheap by Vienna standards. They have a huge array of cakes and pastries of course, as well as sandwiches and other savouries. My sister (who's not vegan) got a sandwich from there for her conference lunch one day and raved about it for the whole evening afterwards. I only tried a great sticky pastry, plus an espresso, and read my kindle for a couple of hours.
Elmira
I went to this place cos it was relatively close to where I was staying. It's a small biomarket with a vegan cafe added on, only a couple of tables. The food is super fresh and homemade; they have a couple of salad options and a hot main dish each day, on a changing menu. I tried goulash, and a big fluffy latte. It was all good. She tried to upsell me a salad, but I wasn't hungry enough.
It was hard to find somehow.. but I can't recall exactly why now. The street of the address is not actually where the entrance is, or something.
Veganista
An ice cream chain, these are everywhere. Great flavours, generous scoops, good prices. I tried black forest and poppyseed.
Pita Box
They have a big kebab-shaped lump of seitan rotating in the same way normal kebab places have meat! Wild. An extensive mostly-vegan menu, including different kebab combos and falafel. I had seitan in a pita and was able to load it with toppings from the counter myself. They have a bunch of interesting hummus flavours, including peanut (which obviously is what I had). The guy told me which things in the counter weren't vegan, which I think was just the tzatziki.
HappyCow lists this as non-veg, but I'm 99% sure everything was vegetarian.
Voodies
A junkfood stop near Karlsplatz with a wide range of burgers and toppings. I had a Mexican hotdog, fries and homemade lemonade. Cheap and tasty.
Veggiezz
A wide and varied menu, mostly consisting of meat-substitute oriented dishes, the form of bowls, plates and burgers. I went with a couple of omnivores and they were both happy. It was super busy and there seemed to be only two staff, so it was a while before we got served. There are seats downstairs, too. I ate pepper steak. Most dishes are very customisable in terms of sides, sauces and add-ons. Pricey, and not huge portions, but average by Vienna standards I think. There are a few branches around the city.
Harvest Cafe
A super nice cosy place, my sister and I collapsed here after a long day of walking to recouperate so we wouldn't start fighting as soon as we got home. She had a hot chocolate and I had a veganised Viennese coffee, and we shared apple strudel. We were spoilt for choice on the cake front, they all looked great, but we weren't hungry enough for two.
It's all vegetarian, and vegan stuff is labelled.
Denn's Biomart
If all else fails, there are Denn's everywhere. They usually have a cafe counter with sandwiches, pastries and cakes, as well as good coffee and smoothie options.
I didn't do a lot of touristy stuff in Vienna (I did eat of course), but here's a few things...
I went to the Central Library. It's pretty awesome, straddling a highway and a metro station, with lots of floors, a good view, and a restaurant at the very top.
The main library, in the museum quarter, is an architectural marvel in itself and costs 3eur to enter for a day. Since I was passing by late afternoon, I figured I'd come back when I had a full day to spend, but I never did.
I went for a run with H along the river. There are tons of good places to run. We also hiked through some vinyards, to the Alps. We found a lookout tower, but it was closed until May. There were some great views of the city on the way down.
Some chill time in the Czech countryside, with my new Vipassana friend P. Photosets linked throughout.
P met me in Brno, and we spent the evening wandering around in the sun. And whiled the evening away in an amazing tea shop, with different culturally themed rooms (Japanese, Chinese, Indian) and a super chill atmosphere.
We walked around the local countryside, around P's town Hustopece. It's largely flat, with gentle rolling hills and lots of vinyards. Spring was here and the flowers were blooming.
We took the bus to Mikulov, and explored this beautiful town. There's a castle with stunning grounds and gardens, and view over the town from above. We went into the crypt and learnt about the history of the building which had once been a church.
We had a great lunch with some amazing DIY hot chocolates, before wandering up nearby hills.
We hiked up Palava Hill, with stops along the way to look out over the lake, and see various ruins. The lake used to be a valley with villages; you can still see some trees standing tall out of the water, and a small island with the remains of a church. We ended in a town where we visited a chaotic art studio, and had drinks in a nationally famous coffee place, with a beautiful terrace and view from the hillside.
At the end of the week we took the bus to Prague. In the evening we took a boat ride on the river, and ate at Loving Hut. The next morning we walked into the city from the suburbs, and at at Moment, before parting ways.
It's a beautiful day and I'm starting out by getting everything I own thoroughly covered in hair at a cat cafe. I think it's gonna be a good week.
I'll be at Researcher Centric Scholarly Communication on Tuesday, the journalism and misinformation track on Wednesday, and the Developer track on Thursday. See you around!
Kira Radinsky: Data is going to be the new currency. Not sharing health data is inadvertently causing someone else to die. Same with terrorism-related data.
And the way she said it... is a terrifying lay justification of surveillance and authoritarianism. This is how you convince the population to give up their privacy.. through fear.. I'm not buying what she's selling.
Fortunately one of the subsequent questions from the floor pointed out that privacy has been distinctly lacking from this panel discussion so far.
csarven massively overengineered, automated, semantic-ised and self-dogfooded the LDN spec requirements, test suite and implementation reports, but it all paid off.
My transcription of TimBL's talk in the Web History track at TheWebConf 2018.
So much stuff I could bore you with.
I'll tell you about some random bits, some of the other systems.
I start with the tip of the hat to Mum and Dad for brining me up as two programmers, some of the earlier programmers. Mum and Dad met designing and working on the team that put together the Ferranti Mark I computer, the commercialization of the Ferranti Mark I. The spirit then was very much that all computers were the same and whatever you can do with one computer you can do with all and it's really up to your imagination. They imagined they'd have early computers translating to Russian and back by the end of the week. Figuring out that some things were easy and some things were more difficult.
One of the early themes was my Dad talking to people about computers, explaining things to people, using intersecting water jets to explain how binary worked for people.
One of the things he tried to explain was the difference between what people can do and what computers can do. People can do that random association, they can think about something technical they learned and every time they smell the cheese they were eating when they learned it (at the WebConf in Lyon) then they can make that connection, random connection, between cheese and the idea. Computers couldn't do that.
One of the early fascinations was with things that could do that. The first time I went to CERN in 1980 was write a program called ENQUIRE. Two versions, one for PC, COMPAQ portable luggable PC. This was a notepad thing, basically ran on a terminal so you could look at a notepad, create a note and at the bottom of the note would be links, you could add extra links, browse through the thing, only go through it by following links, start with the homepage and organise your stuff with an hierarchy, remember the place, mark this point, go to another place and say you want to link to this place, mark and link, a link would store to the place I'd previously marked and when you link between the two it would give you a sentence you had to fill in from a popup menu with the relationship between the two things. This thing in this note is described by this or had things like 'created by', and so on. Pretty semantic webby in a sense, in that you had a choice of different predicates. Useful for describing particular projects, the sort of thing a British programmer would end up going to Switzerland to work to help program.
I came in as a contract programmer for 6 months, during that 6 months we had to get up to speed. So the idea that any organisation ought to have some sort of system for allowing people to write down what they've done, explain why they did it and then go away, at the end of the student's summer or whatever. One of the critical things was you could make arbitrary links, when you realised there was a connection between two things you couldcapt ure it.
Spreadsheets were ridiculously popular, a huge amount of human knowledge is.. there's a great TED talk, someone who looked at how much knowledge is locked up in spreadsheets, and nobody who wrote the spreadsheet has the faintest idea of what it means, and people use the spreadsheet as a critical part of the business end up abandoning parts of it because they don't understand it. The spreadsheet can't make arbitrary connections between different things.
When you say, when we tell it that I want this thing, I put the same formula in all these rows it doesn't even realise you've got an array, you just made a lot of things that are the same, but it doesn't realise that you're talking about an array of objects let alone what the array of objects actually represents or the semantic relationship between the columns.
A lot of fascination with trying to capture the semantics of things and of arbitrary links.
I won't talk about the history of the Web itself because it's already been talked about, so I'll just pick some things.
One thing about the architecture of the Web. The crucial thing about the Web you realise you've been told is taking the Internet stuff, the idea of getting things over the Internet world of documents which existed before wikipedia, and the world of hypertext. The world of hypertext, at the time, you could make links on my little hypertext note thing between different files, you could typically make links within a CD-ROM but you couldn't make links between different CD-ROMs, they were used for manuals and things, there was a whole thing there.
I hadn't come across Ted Nelson at all, not until afterwards.
The idea of Web architecture, if you think about URLs, http://yadayad/yada - which is the most important symbol in the URL? The key one is the #. Everything hangs around the hash. The thing that connects one world to the other world and makes them work together.
On the left hand side of the URL that's all the name of a document. And then there's a hash and after that means: okay when you've got that document, within that document - whatever that document is, whatever system whatever language - then that thing. So it's global identifier for a document, followed by # local identifier within the document.
I didn't expect the whole Web to be a Web of HTML, I imagined lots of PDFs and SVGs and things, and that HTML would be mainly used for finding those things so you could follow the links and eventually you'd end up with the jewel of information you were after. Like gopher had menus and menus and then the text file. HTML would be used for the menus. Wasn't like that at all, HTML became powerful enough to use for all the documents. It became an HTML Web.
Relatively soon afterwards at the first conference I remember having a slide about Web semantics and saying that we have links between different documents but actually... when you have my birth certificate and the title deeds for my house and the title deeds for the house are saying this house and this person, and that this person owns this house. With hypertext links you clicked on one thing but yeah, it's more interesting to work on semantics, certainly from a computer science point of view, to build systems which process the actual knowledge underneath.
You've heard about the Web consortium.
The browser wars... we only just had the consortium running in time, Microsoft and Netscape were furiously battling each other for the domination of the net.
I'll sumamarise Web history from then on.. a lot of people were terrified that Netscape dominated the Web, then that Microsoft dominated the Web and all computing. Then the Web realising they're not worried about Microsoft dominating because there are lots of browsers, but then the world worrying that the browser is irrelevant and the dominant search engine has lots more power, and then Facebook login and so on..
The eras of the Web you can characterise by what the dominant commercial, by what the threat was. Always when you have a monopoly it threatens the duration.. the person who is running the monopoly can decide arbitrary standards themselves, they can just write specs and if you're lucky they can let you know in due course how they work.
There are mainly 4 dominant companies, not so many code bases... this has always been an issue. When there are times when you wake up and you're not worried about the AT&T any more, the Netscape monopoly, the AOL monopoly any more.. things can change very quickly, maybe there will be one day you don't worry about the Facebook monopoly. Maybe things will use Solid (solid.mit.edu) where we're using the Web to build systems that don't have the problem that everyone is in one silo.
The hash was a key part of the web architecture generally. And it took off with largely with HTTP and HTML. The idea of the http-colon-yada.. the idea was that you should be able to change out the protocols every now and again. When you found that you wanted a new space of documents then you could change that out. Initially it could be gopher:, ftp:. By allowing it to be ftp: - you were told the ftp address, you probably were given the ftp instructions before the Web. Go to this site and log in as anonymous, give your email address, cd to here, get the thing. Wrap those instructions up into a URL and wow! All of the legacy ftp system became part of the Web.
The colon was the second most important part of Web architecture, that says even though it's HTTP at the moment we can change that.
One of the things we messed up quite early on when people said this is not secure enough, and there was competition between two designs: shttp and https... wrooongg.. we should.. what we ended up doing is saying we should have https everywhere. This means that every Web page, wherever you have an HTTP URL, you should be changing it to an https URL. I bet when you do that you don't even keep it all the same, you change one thing you change some other things too.
The push for https everywhere basically breaks the entire Web. This is the only technical change that breaks the entire Web. The links to W3C TRs, the link to semantic technologies, we had to put in a lot more things to allow computers to understand that http and https are interchangeable.
Like HSTS.. upgrade secure requests.. should have used that way back at the beginning, instead of adding an s to the URL. People felt they wanted to be able to give the guarantee of security to link follower.
The colon is an interesting thing, fun now to see that.
We have this project called Solid which allows you to store your data on datastores that you control and uses https, and somebody just wrote all the code for safe:. SAFE is a decentralised network where your data is stored by lots of people and is encrypted and out of the eyes of governments and companies, they just added safe: handling to the Solid stack. You can now run your Solid apps over a SAFE infrastructure.
The hash is something that is important for moving on bit by bit, decade after decade, about every ten years we can afford to change those protocols. Most of the people in the W3C TAG, Henry [Thompson], had been involved in this and is just getting around.. finding people who introduce new namespaces, want them to go to their system, their protocol, pay them for a name.. The TAG goes around saying no just put it in http space. It works. We all want to take over the world, but...
How many minutes have I got? Who's in charge?
I'll tell you the history of the Semantic Web.
> Wendy: Can we still get lunch?
I had no idea.
Okay I won't tell you the history.
In one sentence... the Semantic Web which was introduced, we started talking about back in the days of this conference, which later became the crazy focus of a whole bunch of dedicated logicians. And it was a lot.. much pride was lost and face was lost and which was much poo-poo-ed by the incumbents, shot down by Google and Microsoft, by people whose careers had been built on existing systems like XML. And poo-poo-ed by people like the CTO, the chief researcher of Google, Peter Norvig, as severely.. that Semantic Web was attacked by all these people, it battled on. It is now huge. I was just in the Linked Open Data track, there is a ridiculous amount of Linked Open Data in the world. A serious proportion of webpages have embedded microdata and Google will honour that data if you have it. A product, a band, if you put
RDFa in that webpage Google will understand what it's about.
Google created schema.org in the way that a large company with a couple of friends can do... gobbled some standards up gave them a different name and a different URL, and because of that the Semantic Web is a thing, there's a ridiculous amount of it.
The people who had been plugging along at it for a long time, it was great to see them celebrating in the session today.
If you were talking about graphs people would look at you weirdly, 'excuse me, we use trees'. But now if you're not using a graph database you're just missing out. It's the year of the graph, the year of the Semantic Web stuff. A story with a happy ending.
Mostly I cooked for myself or ate (terrible) conference food, but on a couple of occasions I ate out in Lyon...
Aux Bonheurs des Chats
Arriving by nightbus first thing on a Sunday morning didn't yield a lot of breakfast options. Aux Bonheurs des Chats, a vegan cat cafe, opened at 11 though, so I waited.
A wonderful decision! I sat down at a window table, already occupied by a moggie who declined to move, and inched closer and closer to my laptop over the course of the morning. Everything was covered in hair. They offered brunch for 16eur which seemed a bit much, and I wasn't that hungry. I had a hazelnut chocolate brownie (big!) and a super creamy matcha latte.
Hank Vegan Burger
Good burgers, lots of different toppings, and coleslaw or potato wedges as a side, and some vegan cakes. Small meal deal (drink and side) or large (plus dessert) at 13 and 15eur respectively. I just ate a burger and potato wedges.
Like An Elephant
A trek across town and up a hill was absolutely worth it. The menu wasn't huge, which means I wasn't paralysed by choice. Between two of us, we shared two starters, two mains, and two desserts, which came to 49eur. Delicious gazpacho soup, and an avocado mush thing were the starters. The avocado mush was seated upon a cheesecake-like grount nut crust, and topped with dark chocolate flakes. It was as close to dessert as you can get without actually being sweet. The mains were seitan with bok choi and mango noodles, and a burger with baby potatoes. And the desserts were two tiny cakes; one with chocolate and one with pear. I loved all of it. It was also a nice cosy place, with friendly staff and witty signage.
YAAFA
Recommended for the 'potato things', and it was open late, and there is a branch not too far from the bus station, I went to YAAFA on my last afternoon. There are many falafel pita options, half of which are vegan (all vegetarian), plus homemade bottomless lemonade and iced tea, and indeed good potato things - something between wedges and US style homefries. I had a falafel pitta with orange carrot salad, and stayed there for several hours. Seating upstairs was nice. No wifi.
Modjo
Not far from the Part-Dieu train station and the central library is a big glass fronted cafe on a corner. Stopped in for coffee, and to enjoy sitting in the sun whilst still being inside, and spotted a chia bowl with coconut milk on the menu. It was pricey, but a nice breakfast.
Un Monde Vegan
I stopped by this all vegan supermarket just to see. Picked up some Vego of course, and some chocolate almond milk and tofu sausage to snack on for lunch. They have a whole arrary of fancy looking vegan cheese wheels, in good French style. Had I come here at the beginning of the week, I might have invested.
I didn't do any touristing in Lyon, I was just at TheWebConf.
Despite the fact I am no longer officially an academic, I hauled myself off-route from my EU wanderings to France to attend my fifth World Wide Web Conference. This conference series holds a little nostalgia for me, because it's the very first place I published a paper (in Seoul in 2014) and somewhere I met for the first time many academic idols and people who have gone on to become great friends, collaborators, and shape my future in ways that are even now still unfolding.
Not being institutionally supported though, there was no way I could justify the registration fees out of my own pocket. Fortunately I got two free days for chairing the Developer's track, and one free day courtesy of csarven for helping out with his workshop.
On the Monday I stayed home and worked until it was time to join the LDOW dinner. On Tuesday I sat in on the Researcher Centric Scholarly Communication workshop, and by 'sat in' I mean took detailed transcription of everything everyone said. It went well. In the evening I somehow managed to convene a dinner attended by (hashtag namedropping) TimBL, Henry Thompson, Jeni Tennison, Sarven, Sandro, Jenny and An from CredCo. Wendy Hall and Ruben Verborgh had planned to attend too but missed out due to VIP activities and going to the wrong restaurant respectively.
On Wednesday I tried to pay attention to the Journalism and Misinformation track. I also joined the Minute Madness to present a one minute plug for data.occrp.org.
Thursday was the Developer's track, the official reason I was there. I took turns chairing with Thomas Steiner, and all of the presentations went really well - including all live demos and a remote speaker!
Thursday evening's alternative to the Gala dinner was fancy delicious vegan food at Like An Elephant. I got lost, fell off my bike, and had to climb a hill to get there, but it was totally worth it.
Prague to Lyon, via Munich with Flixbus. About 50eur, 18 hours, a couple of hours to wait in Munich (time for a pretzel and a coffee). Munich ZOB has a Lidl, and a dm, some restaurants, luggage lockers and isn't far from town. Downside: the toilets are 50c, and grim.
There's a much cheaper direct bus from Prague to Lyon with Regiojet, which I originally thought I'd be taking when I decided to go from Prague. But it has limited departures, and I would have arrived a day earlier than I wanted, so I went with Flix.
The journey itself (the night part, Munich to Lyon) was pretty awful. Constant interruptions by the police, mostly in Switzerland. They came to passport check at every stop and sometimes in between. The two black guys on the bus always seemed to be singled out for a bag search when nobody else was. The bus driver had yelling fights with two different sets of passengers, both a couple with a small child. The first, brought too much luggage and he wouldn't let them on the bus. They were yelling a lot outside the bus, which was audible inside, making lots of phonecalls, and eventually the Swiss police turned up anyway. The bus was delayed about 45 minutes, and the family did not board. The second time a family hadn't been woken up at Zurich and were upset to find themselves in Lausanne. Dad was yelling in French, Mum was begging the driver to speak English, and driver only wanted to make demands in German. Some passengers tried to help, but of course the Swiss police were already here. The driver wanted to charge them for their 'illegal' ride from Zurich to Lausanne. Srsly.
The return Lyon to Munich with Flixbus was 30eur, 12 hours; same driver, but no yelling this time. I had two seats to myself, and mostly slept. Still interrupted by Swiss police a lot, one time with a cute dog who sniffed everything.
After a day in Munich, I took Munich to Krakow; 13 hours, 40eur, Flixbus again. After Regensburg I again had two seats to myself, and slept pretty well. We were entirely uninterrupted by police or passport checks; we went through Austria and Czech Republic, and all borders passed unnoticed.
I'm in a small bakery in Krakow who usually has several vegan things, but today they only had two muffins left. I ate one, and took the other to go for later. Now I'm sitting here sipping my espresso and some more vegans came in and there's no cake for them. I feel bad but not bad enough to give them my spare muffin. Which, by the way, is an amazing blueberry and lemon giant monster cake and I'm excited to eat it again later.
I arrived mid-morning from the night bus, and headed straight to the hostel. Dumped my bags, and wandered into town. The old town is surrounded by a park in the area that used to be occupied by city walls before they were torn down. To make space for the park, history be damned. Anyway, it's a nice park. I ended up at the castle, naturally, of course. The old town is all around super nice. After checking in to the hostel properly, and a quick lunch, I joined a walking tour.
I pretty much crashed after that. The next day I passed the couple of hours between hostel checkout and train departure at Sweet Life bakery, where I literally bought all of the vegan cake, and also discovered I could veganise one of their lunch bowls. See also, food info.
I took the train from the main station. It was fairly easy to find. I bought my ticket the day before from a machine. The train was spacious and after Warsaw I had most of a carridge to myself. It took 5h30 to Gdynia, for 199pln (~50eur).
A burger and hotdog joint, with great salads and toppings, homemade lemonade and bottled sodas. I had seitan pastrami, plus vegan cheese as an extra, and lemonade for less than 5eur. The burger is big. There are also potatoes, and other drink options that look great. The 'meat' part of the burger is also covered by many options, from seasonal roasted vegetables to tofu. You can have it as a wrap or a salad bowl, too.
It was crazy busy when I was there between 2 and 3 pm, and I had to wait in line both to order and for the food. They give you a beeper. I'm really happy to see a fully vegan place like this so busy, including families with young kids, and old people.
There's enough space to sit, even when busy, a toilet, English menu, and staff are friendly. No wifi.
Sweet Life
A small bakery, with a few vegan cake options. Opens early. I went here before my train out, as it's so close to the station. They said they usually have more vegan cake, but on this occasion only two lemon and blueberry muffins were in the display. I bought one to eat with my coffee, and one to go. HappyCow said they had pies, so I'd been hoping to get lunch there to take on the train. This was one of the best muffins EVER. It was huge, super moist, lemony and fruity and just.. so good. Later two more vegans came in and there was no cake for them, but I had no regrets.
There are lots of seats, and wifi so I got my laptop out. A bit later I noticed a sign on the wall for 'life bowls', including one with tofu. I enquired; they usually have egg, but they were happy to make it without. I had to wait for the kitchen to open at 11. I ate half and took the rest to go. This was also great, lots of flavours and textures, all good. The chef came to ask me how I liked it.
Ice cream and juice
Loads of places sell vegan sorbets, including some interesting flavours. I didn't eat any, but I audited every ice cream place I passed.
There are also tons of fresh juice bars. I had a nice orange, elderflower and mint concoction from Frankie's. Watch out, some places put yoghurt in their smoothies.
The rest
There's another burger place, a vegan kebab place, and a couple of bistros, listed on HappyCow. Hopefully I'll pass through again and get to try them.
Started trying not to arrive to a new unfamiliar place with no food on a Sunday when everything is closed. Managed it! But it's Labour Day, so everything is closed.
The plan was to visit every country in the EU (before March 2019 for reasons). The plan was to spend at least a month in each one, ideally in one place, and just kind of absorb the surroundings. I alternate remote laptop work with city wandering, rural hiking, chilling out with the kindle in parks, coffeeshops, and vegan cafes.
Things haven't gone quite to plan so far though. I've been pulled around by people and events, in no logical order. Not complaining, but I really need to slow down for a while.
My stay in Budapest was cut short on both ends, as at the beginning of March I had the opportunity to stay with Elizabeth and her family in Ljubljana for a long weekend. On the 21st of March, began a Vipassana meditation course in Mariazelle, Austria. I'd applied to sit, then agreed to serve when they emailed to say they were short-handed.
Dreading the complicated and lengthy public transport options to the Austrian mountains, at the last minute I managed to catch a ride with another meditation student from Budapest. I made no onward travel plans, guessing I could wing it at the end of the course; I wanted to be in Bratislava, but was confident I'd get a lift at least to Vienna.
I did. I slept almost the whole way and was surprised to find myself deposited in a random suburb around 11am. I metro'd to Erdberg bus station, which is not particularly well located. Oh also it was Easter Sunday. Nothing was functioning. No coffee, no food. The bus station was open, but their internet was down. Which meant... they couldn't sell any tickets. I was told to hang about half an hour, then buy a ticket from the driver on the next bus to Bratislava. The bus was full. Next bus in an hour. I went back into the station and it seemed that the internet was back on, and they were frantically selling tickets to frantic people. I joined a line. By the time I got to the front of the line, the internet was broken again. I asked after the nearest wifi hotspot, and was told to go to MacDonald's two subway stops away. That seemed like a hassle, so I wandered into the main bus pickup area, and hopped onto a FlixBus network for just long enough to buy a ticket for the next Bratislava bus with the Flix app, which I'd had the great foresight to download and hook up to my paypal right before I left the meditation center. Onwards.
Bratislava was a stop-gap. My next 'pull' was to meet my sister in Vienna. We hadn't seen each other for about three years, and she was over from the US for a conference. Her AirBnB was covered, so she agreed to let me sleep on the couch. Vienna is expensive, and spending a full two weeks there wasn't hugely appealing; hence Bratislava.
Vienna airport is about half way between Vienna and Bratislava in fact, so my sister caught a late bus after her flight landed and stayed in my AirBnBs for two nights in Bratislava. I packed a majority of my touristing in during the last two days of her visit.
We took a dead cheap and great quality Regiojet bus back to Vienna. We left our luggage in the FREE!!! lockers in the main Bratislava bus station for the first half of the day. I spent the week in Vienna working, indispersed with a little wandering and my first ~ ever ~ visit to a hair salon. There are plenty of vegan food options, including a bakery right in Stefansplatz metro station, though I mostly cooked in the flat. On my sister's free day, we hiked through vinyards to the eastern most foothill of the Alps (or something).
I caught an exceptionally good value Regiojet train to Brno, next. On the Vipassana retreat in Mariazelle I shared a room with P, who subsequently invited me to visit her in South Moravia any time. Since my next 'pull', a week after Vienna, was to Lyon for TheWebConf, and there are good Prague-Lyon bus connections, this is where I went next.
I spent a delightful week staying with P, her sister and parents in Hustopece. We synchronised our work hours, and when we were both free she took me to visit attractions in local villages, and for long walks in nature. We meditated together mornings and evenings almost every day. P is a yoga teacher; I joined her classes when there was space.
It so happened that P also needed to be in Prague on the 21st of April. We took the bus from Brno the night before, and stayed with her friend. In the evening we took a touristy river cruise, and went to Loving Hut. The next morning we walked from the suburbs to Prague Castle, and ate a good breakfast together.
I bussed to Lyon via Munich. The latter half of the journey was full of frustrated people, constant interruptions by the Swiss police, and general chaos. I didn't sleep much.
I have been to Lyon twice before, with my high school French exchange program. I've done the tourist things, though I don't remember them. I stayed with a friend, and mostly my time was filled with TheWebConf and trying to work. It was a hot and sunny week. I got to see a few people I haven't seen for a while and whom I was very happy indeed to spend time with. I almost didn't come to WebConf. France is the wrong direction. But I'm glad I did.
The week wound down quietly. With a late bus on Saturday night I spent the day between the library (wifi sucks, ports blocked), the river bank, YAAFA (no wifi, good falafel) and Perrache bus station (excellent wifi, seats, power).
I arrived to Munich bright and early, left my bag in a bus station locker, and explored.
Next stop Krakow, via another night bus. This time I was headed for a hostel, so I got to sleep in a bed. I explored the town center, and ate some good stuff. After brunch the next day I took a train to Gdynia. This was five hours, and much more expensive than Rome2Rio had led me to believe it would be, but such is life. I could've for half the price taken a 10 hour bus or a night train, but I kind of just wanted to be on my way.
In Gdynia my new landlady picked me up from the train station, I signed a one month lease for a room in a shared flat, and thus begins, at long last, the slowing down.
Always comment your code, kids. Especially when writing a monstrous inaccessible JavaScript frontend. It makes it much easier to disassemble for scraping purposes.
Moving into a shared flat with stranger(s) for a month seemed like a good idea, and I still think it's a good idea, and when I decided to I promised myself I wouldn't be afraid to enter the kitchen / leave my bedroom when someone else is around like I was during my undergrad BUT APPARENTLY THIS INSTINCT IS VERY HARD TO FIGHT
Does anyone want to recommend (or research) portable travel kitchen-related stuff for me?
To date I've been carrying around a small wooden spoon, a bamboo straw, and a ragtag assortment of plastic spoons and forks (sometimes chopsticks) that I've acquired and seemed robust enough to hold onto, until they break. I stuff them into the zip pouch that also holds my USB cables and external hard drive and stuff. I used to have a silicon tea infuser, but I left that at my airbnb in Budapest :( I have never possessed a reusable flask worth keeping, they always leaked or smelled or broke or wandered off by themselves. But I really want to remedy that.
The only long-term food item I carry around is loose leaf tea stuffed in gradually degrading plastic pouches.
For the first time this month I moved into a place without any coffee making facilities at all, so now I'm fantasising about a collapsible silicone drip coffee cone like this. I'm dumping the grounds straight in the cup and drinking around them at the moment which is basically fine. I usually do this with tea too, even when I had my infuser I only used it about 50% of the time. So maybe I don't neeeed to replace that.
I'd like some kind of robust storage pouches for tea and herbs/spices though. Small containers that all attach or fit together somehow so they're not drifting around my backpack or easily lose-able. Ideally something that folds flat when empty.
I like the idea of a collapsible coffee cup flask likethese. But I'm not sure if I should just get a full size good quality thermos and accept that it is always going to take up space. I should probably try to carry and drink more water anyway. Whatever flask I get I really want space for a clip so I can attach it to things.
I should probably get a more long-term spoon/fork solution, and a better pouch to carry them in.
Me: okay I spent way too much at the market on imminently expiring vegetables so I'm gonna make a giant chilli and eat it for at least the next three days.
Also me: HEY ROOMMATES I MADE LOADS OF FOOD HELP YOSELVES
...
Later me: where did my chilli go i don't understand :(
Went to a beach almost every day (Gdynia, Sopot). May have got sunstroke.
Finished new Lost In Space, finally watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2, started Abaddon's Gate (the third book in the Expanse series) and am gagging to watch the Expanse on netflix again.
Good eating in Gdansk Wrzeszcz (pronounced as a guttural sound like you're suppressing a sneeze), and a hike along the length of Stogi Beach and back through the woods.
Went to the Tri-City Couchsurfing meetup this evening, and met so many wonderful people. Receiving such warmth and hospitality from strangers makes me wanna host again, and offer it to others.
Content warning: This post is really boring and self-indulgent, and I definitely overthink clothes-buying. You probably don't want to read it.
If you know me at all (or read my logs) you know I only buy clothes about once a year (though I bought a secondhand hoodie in Prague in february, not sure if this makes what I'm about to write about my second shopping trip of 2018) and also I only buy secondhand stuff (except for underwear). This isn't about cost, though that helps, but a determination to make as little dent in the world as possible with my material consumption habits. I also have a one-in one-out policy with new stuff because my backpack is at capacity.
Since it's out of character and I feel bad about it, I'm writing about why I bought stuff from SportsDirect in Poland over the past few days.
Bag
My daypack broke on Saturday. I got it in Japan in Nov 2016, it folds into a little pocket to clip onto my big backpack when not in use, and has lasted way longer than I expected. I thought the straps or seams would go, especially as I use it for carrying my laptop. But uh, the zips fell off. They just disappeared. I do not know how to repair this, and it's a pretty critical piece of my day-to-day infrastructure. So I needed a replacement STAT.
I happened to know of an extremely compact ~12eur pack in SportsDirect, so I thought I'd not waste time searching around and just get it. It's not as good as my old one - no side pockets, and the case it packs into is separate rather than attached - but it folds to about one quarter of the size and seems pretty solid.
This is what led to the buying of the rest of the things.
Shoes
For a few months I've been down to my running shoes and my walking boots. So I've wanted something else to serve as sandals/casual shoes/shoes-I-can-wear-with-a-dress-without-looking-like-a-person-who-only-owns-running-shoes-and-walking-boots.
Also, my boots are terrible. I got them from a secondhand shop in Bosnia. They look fine, and have good ankle support. They're not waterproof on top, and the right one has sprung a leak in the sole. 30% of the time they're not comfortable (not enough to make me ditch them, but often enough to be really annoying). They're two sizes too big so I always have to wear chunky walking socks with them. And they're freaking huge, inflexible, hard to pack, slow to put on and take off, generally in the way whilst travelling.
Mostly I find myself wearing the boots whilst on the move (because I can't pack them), the running shoes the rest of the time, until my feet cry out for a change of scene and I have to wear the boots for a couple of days. I mostly wear my running shoes for hikes too because my boots are too annoying.
But I need something that's not my running shoes, because they're gonna wear out quickly, I'm sick of getting them full of sand at the beach, and my feet need a break from them sometimes.
I had been mentally prepping to hit secondhand shops and street markets in the Tri-City area for sandals this week. But then I found walking sandles and squishy beach pumps in SportsDirect.
The sandals are good quality, I found a kids size that fits (cheaper), I think they look nice, are small and lightweight, and they are really comfy. They were ~25eur. Given how much serious hiking I actually use my walking boots for at the moment, I can definitely now ditch the boots in favour of these sandles. I'll reconsider next time I need to climb Everest, or go somewhere with winter, obviously.
I would totally wear walking sandals with a dress and consider myself dressed up, but then I spotted the beach pumps. Also comfy, lightweight, fold totally flat and from a distance look potentially smart. Sure they have a little cartoon fish on them.. these may also be kids shoes.. but whatever. They're less obviously walking sandals. They're also much quicker to slip on and off, and clearly designed to get wet and dry fast, so will be useful in gross hostel showers, actually at the beach, and whatever. They were less than 10eur.
I spent ten minutes agonising and trying both pairs on before deciding that collectively they still take up less space than my boots, and I will definitely wear both of them a lot, so I can justify both.
Other stuff
I also bought socks :o First new socks since circa Boston 2015, half of which are getting thin in the heels and soles and I can finally throw out.
In Vienna I borrowed my sister's running belt, a fabulous stretchy zip pocket that fits all the things inside but is super light and folds up small. I tried to uh acquire it from her, but she wouldn't let me have it. I found a very similar one SportsDirect for ~10eur so I just bought it. I need to reduce barriers to running, and this isn't the kind of thing secondhand shops have in abundance. I later checked Amazon and the decent looking ones aren't much cheaper.
Aaaand I bought a pair of shorts. Definitely something I should be able to pick up at a secondhand shop or market, but I have pretty specific requirements on the shorts I want (they need to simultaneously work as running shorts, pyjamas and nice leaving the house shorts, obviously have pockets, and not clash with any of my shirts).. they were there, and cheap, and super comfy and met my requirements and I'm really sick of not having shorts.
Also out of charcter, everything I bought was black :o
Stuff out
Before I leave Poland I'll find someone who'll take clothes donations, for distribution or recycling, and leave behind:
Walking boots - they're still wearable and the leaks are probably reparable.
Stretchy shorts/skirt that P (Czech R) gave me in April as a temporary solution to my not having shorts for running. I've never managed to wear them.
A tshirt P also gave me. I don't like it as much as I thought I did, the fit is weird.
A tshirt Malaysian Mum gave me in Penang in 2016. Same as above.
Maybe my winter coat..?? It's so bulky. But I still might be cold and want in the Baltics it this summer. Hmm.
The Hel Peninusula is a narrow strip of land poking out over the north of Poland, in the Baltic Sea. Yesterday I took a one hour ferry there from Gdynia, walked 20 miles along it, then took a one hour train back. It was exhausting, and beautiful.
The ferry from Gdynia runs from May to September, and is 40PLN (~10EUR). There's one guaranteed to run in each direction, and two which run if there are enough people demanding it. I went at 10am, and it takes about an hour. The port is about a 15 minute walk from Gdynia main station, in a straight line. I bought my ticket from the office on the port (they're also available online) about half an hour before departure. There were only a handful of other people on board.
Hel itself is the biggest town, on the end of the strip. It is surrounded on all sides by beaches, and backed by woods with many remnants of the World Wars, like bunkers and shelters. I didn't stick around in the town for very long after disembarking the ferry, but plunged into the woods to cross to the less inhabited beaches on the northern side.
For a while I followed the beach. It was windy, mini sandstorms peppered my ankles; the waves crashed to my right and there was no-one. Miles and miles of soft white sand, stretching out in both directions. It really felt like paradise.
The beach is separated from the woods by banks of sand dunes of various sizes. It was much more sheltered and warm to walk through here, but the dunes were deep and soft; ploughing through took more energy. I wandered between beach, dunes and woods. The trees were far enough apart that an absence of well defined trails didn't matter. Pale green-blue moss on the ground was deliciously crunchy underfoot. Sometimes the woods would open into wide patches of dunes, pure and white and sweeping, completely undisturbed by other footprints. Periodically I came across a bunker or a rusty watch tower, half-buried in the sand or overgrown by trees.
I had planned to walk from Hel to Chałupy, and take the train from there back to Gdynia. OpenStreetMap calculated the walk to take about 6 and a half hours, so I had 1.5 hours of bufffer before the second-to-last train and 3 hours before the last one. Plenty of wiggle room. Except I managed to consume almost all of the buffer before I was even half way. I was zigzagging through the woods and dunes, stopping for photos and lunch, and of course walking on sand dunes is considerably slower than OSM accounted for. When I realised there was a very real risk of missing the last train, I stepped up my pace.
I passed through the villages of Jurata and Jastarnia without really stopping to take them in, but I was keen to get to the narrowest part of the peninsula, hoping to see sea and beaches on both sides. I did stop long enough at Jurata to walk down the pier, and read about how the peninsula was used as a torpedo testing ground by the Germans in WWII.
There's a little peak called Libek an hour out of Jastarnia, which I think is the narrowest part of the split. Making it here felt like an achievemnet, and was a turning point in my energy levels. I could see the sea from both sides, but the trees are thick and the photo doesn't really capture it.
After that I realised my legs were tired and to make it to Chałupy on time I had no more opportunities to linger. The next village was Kuznica, which had beaches on both sides it would be nice to enjoy, so I decided to cop out one stop early and take the train from here instead. This bought me an hour, so I slowed my pace a little. I sat on the beach in Kuznica on the bay side, where the sea was much calmer, shallower and warmer than the Baltic Sea side.
There was of course no ticket machine at the train station. I watched the sunset over the tracks, and the train arrived just before 9.
I bought the ticket from the conductor, half asleep, struggling to get out the name of my departure station (which I had only managed to implant in my brain beforehand because it ends in 'nica' meaning I associate it with Bosnia pies) and where I was going to, by the time she came around (13.50PLN, ~3EUR).
Oh my god, I finally got on top of currency conversion for my Acquire posts.
I've been tracking my purchases since 2016-01-01, but lots of travel complicates aggregation of costs. Exchange rates vary day to day (that's as precise as I care about, at least) and currency conversion APIs vary in what they'll convert between, and how effectively. Several months ago.. maybe a year?.. I was auto-converting all purchases to USD. Some time ago something broke and I finally dug in and put it all back together again - better this time.
I abstracted exchange rate API requests and storing the results into CashCache and bulkloaded currency conversions to EUR, GBP and USD for all historical purchases into my triplestore. Henceforth the conversions will happen automatically when I insert something new.
This means I can get back on top of my budget and know how much I'm spending again! Which is.. pretty important. Cos though I log everything, and am extremely thrifty, I have little realistic idea of where I am finances-wise. This is about to change. I'm hoping my general caution reveals that I spend much less than I think..
Fixing up my /summary script. Appalled at how much I spend eating in restaurants, but pleasantly surprised by accommodation averages. Transit costs are meaningless at the moment because I have a ton of logs missing for long distance bus prices.
Pretty sure people I meet at CS meetups think I'm super social and talkative, but actually I've spent the entire week prior in complete isolation in preparation for this one evening.
Anyway I went to the Tri-City CS meetup again and it was cool again, surprise. Just writing this to remind myself to keep going to stuff with people.
Morning in the Emigration Museum in Gdynia, long walk along the coast to Latarnia Morska lighthouse in Gdansky Nowy Port, wrapped up with dinner at Vege Port.
Today I climbed to the top of the lighthouse from which the first shots of WWII were fired. I feel like this and the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo should make some kind of special collection.
Briefly caught up in Hull trains' crisis, but eventually made it to Lincolnshire and spent the weekend with family. Hid in a box to surprise my brother on his 21st birthday. He was not surprised.
For the last year I have been honoured to be part of the OCCRP Data Team, working with and for amazing tecchies and journalists, wrangling data I'd never dreamed of and learning things about the world I never expected. I'm loathe to leave
but
change beckons
and this month I'm excited to be joining the fully-remote data-wrangling-for-good workers cooperative Open Data Services.
I'm honestly astounded I keep finding great jobs in tech that support my idealistic world view, let me make a living working for positive change, with people who share my ethical stances, whilst travelling the world. I know I'm astonishingly privileged to be able to be so picky about the kind of jobs I take in the first place. It's mindblowing that I have been consistently in work for the past few years despite this.
London is TOO BIG ugh it's absolutely preposterous.
Also I started with nearly £25 on my oyster card yesterday and finished with exactly £0.00 so somebody explain to me how daily capping works please? I admit there was a little bit of zone 5 involved, still this is absurd.
I passed a few hours in Vienna this afternoon, between buses. It's a Sunday, so not a lot of food options. I walked (about an hour) from Stadion bus terminal to Vegetasia, an all-vegan Chinese buffet. The food was really good, from fried stuff, to fresh stuff, to rice, noodles, soups, and sushi. Ooh and savoury bao! There were desserts too, but I didn't have space. All-you-can-eat is €10.90, and by Vienna standards this is damn good value. I also had a 'cocktail' of aloe vera, lychee and lime, for €6.50, which was generously sized (though too sweet for me really, I've gotta stop ordering lychee things).
The interior is well-lit and spacious too, and there are also tables outside (I'd had enough of sun by then). The staff are friendly, and there's wifi. Main drawback is they close between 1500 and 1700, so I couldn't stay there longer.
Then I walked, about 35 minutes, to Erdberg bus station.
I stayed a month in the Trójmiasto (Tri-City) area on the north coast of Poland. The three cities, Gdynia, Sopot and Gdansk, are connected by a handy fast train, or stunning walks along beaches or through the woods. There were plenty of veg*n places to eat, and I didn't get to try everything on HappyCow. But here's what I did try:
Gdynia
i Krowa Kala
A vegan burger bar right outside the SKM exit of the main Gdynia train station. I went there a few times due to convenience on my way back from the city center. It's open late, and has a lot of varied options. No English menu, however, and staff didn't seem keen on translating anything for me. Since it was all vegan, I picked at random.
There's wifi, but no power that I could see (I didn't look very hard) and not much seating. (I never saw it full though.)
I tried a seitan burger one time, and a tofu grill another time. Both pretty decent. Full of salad and sauces, and hard to eat. The bread is toasted, which doesn't help. They also offer pita though (and gluten-free bread). The fries were particularly good, seasoned with something a little spicy. On another occasion I got 'pierogi samosa', because I had to know... and they were neither pierogi nor samosa. More like mini deep fried cornish pasties stuffed with samosa vegetables? A big portion though, and they travelled well.
They have different desserts here every day, too. One time I got a really great jam-filled doughnut.
If I ever get back there, I want to try the pita with deep fried oyster mushrooms. They were out when I asked for it. I got a falafel pita instead, with distinctly non-traditional falafel, but still good (the next day, in Amsterdam).
Bio-Pierkarnia
A chain of eco-bakeries, with multiple branches in all three cities (though not all of the branches listed on HappyCow actually seem to exist). I mostly went to the one next door to i Krowa Kala, for obvious reasons. It's not all vegan, but about one third of their cakes, pastries and desserts are. The one by Gdynia station also has a wide range of vegan grocieries, and takeaway sandwiches and salads, some of which are vegan. Good prices.
My favourite cake was an amaranth chocolate slice, which I will continue to fantasise about for years. It's nothing special generally I think, I just have a special taste for that particular kind of cake. On other occasions, I had a fruit tart, chocolate orange muffin, ...
Bioway
A canteen-y sort of place in town, all vegetarian and the staff were able to tell me what was vegan. Pretty hearty and healthy stew-type options which were all pre-prepared. More stuff on the menu, but I was lazy to find out what it was. Not overly exciting, but good for want of anything else.
Veganica
I spotted this place in Gdynia; it wasn't on HappyCow. Felt pretty new, staff still seemed to be finding their feet. I'd just eaten, so I had a random smoothie. It was.. pretty bad. I saw her putting water in, which was an obvious red flag. So yeah, needs work. Maybe the food is better. (All veggie, not all vegan).
Tlok
A nice cafe for working, which always has one vegan cake on offer, and takes coffee very seriously. I spent a morning there.
Sopot
There's a GreenWay here right off the pier. A convenient location, but I never ended up in Sopot over a mealtime, so I didn't go there.
Kulki Anulki
An organic icecream shop with a few vegan options, not far from the beach. I asked for a recommendation and was told to try the banana and dark chocolate together. I never eat two scoops of ice cream of any kind, and I wouldn't normally go for banana. But I did as suggested, and it was incredible. The banana by itself was way better than I expected, and coupling with the bitter chocolate brought out some kind of amazing tang.
Gdansk
Vege Port
This was hands down my favourite place. I went there a bunch of times. On some occasions, I took the train all the way to the suburbu of Wrzeszcz just to eat here, then left again. Or I looked for excuses to pass through Wrzeszcz on my way to or from an adventure.
It's all vegan, and they have an exceptional pizza menu. There are also other dishes, a combination (not fusion) of Polish and Italian. The homemade lemonades are good too; one time there was rhubarb. They also have cake and ice cream.
My favourite pizza was one with not-chicken, pickled cucumber, and crispy onions. Pickles on a pizza! Revolutionary. The cheese was delicious and melty always, and the more ordinary pizza toppings were perfectly cooked. They have a range from very simple to fairly unusual options. I also tried gnocchi bolognese and 'rollo', a not-chicken wrap.
Atmosphere is nice (wifi, power), it was rarely busy, and the staff are super friendly (maybe because they saw me so frequently). Once I stopped by just before closing and they were cashing up, but they still made me a pizza and let me stick around another 20 minutes to eat it.
I took a non-vegan local on one occasion, who subsequently return without me, with other non-vegans, who were similarly impressed.
I think this may be a tie for my favourite ever vegan pizza, with Vegazzi in Budapest.
Avocado
There are two branches of Avocado that I went to, and whilst definitely the same mini-chain, they had quite different menus. I went to one at dinner time and one at lunchtime though, so maybe that was a factor. Both good.
Within walking distance of Brezno beach is a large space, with a really big and varied dinner-type menu. I ate creamy coconut tofu and fresh spinach curry, and a really fantastic cake. I picked the cake for it's fluffy coconut exterior, and to my surprise and delight the inside revealed itself to be layers of chocolate and sour cherry. I could be convinced that this was a magic cake that adapts to the desires of the eater.
The other Avocado is in Wrzeszcz. It's on the same street as the vegan supermarket, and Fukafe, and the other side of the station from Vege Port. Location is top, but the space is much much smaller. I ate deep fried pancakes, stuffed with lentils and spinach, with a really good side salad. The cakes looked good too, but Fukafe next door has a wider range of fancier ones, and was calling me.
Fukafe
A wide range of fancy cakes and coffees. Not cheap, but quite spectacular and unusual selection, so worth it. A nice atomosphere (wifi, power) to hang around for a while, too. I tried an iced latte, and a spinach cake. On another occasion I went in for a cookie but they had none, so I took a coconut energy ball to go instead. It was the only thing that would travel well, though I wouldn't normally go for that as they are so often disappointing. This one however, even after a day of sitting in my backpack on buses, was really great; moist and rich.
Spozyvczak
An all-vegan supermarket in Wrzeszcz. It has all the usual stuff, at all the usual (highish) prices. I stocked up on Vego, and they also have a freezer full of great looking ice creams, though I never got one (having always passed by after stuffing myself at Fukafe or Vege Port).
Atelier Smaku
A gormet vegan gluten-free foodtruck. I finally got vegan pierogi from there; they weren't great, but they were cheap and filling. You can also buy them from the vegan supermarket to cook at home. No English menu, but it is on the website.
Guga Spicy
Guga Spicy sits beside Guga Sweet, by the river in Gdansk. Guga Sweet is a bakery, and was closed when I stopped by, but on request they ran across to fetch desserts from there in Spicy. It was really expensive, and clearly in a generally expensive area of the city. I passed by chance on the Long Night of Museums, surprised to find them open after 10pm. I ate summer rolls (on the menu as spring rolls, which is misleading... I love spring rolls, I only like summer rolls). They were good anyway. I followed with a giant bowl of udon packed full of vegetables, seaweed, and tofu. I took a coconut 'bounty' cake to go, which was fantastic for breakfast the next morning.
Manna68
A nice fairly formal restaurant, close to the touristy area of Gdansk, I was randomly wandering different streets on my way to the train station (to go to Wrzeszcz for Vege Port) when I passed this place by chance. I'd seen it on HappyCow, but not felt inspired to seek it out. But since I was there, I stayed. It's not cheap, but not unreasonable. I ate mole chilli, which was not spicy, but quite chocolatey. They have a brownie on the menu which can get you a free coffee if you guess six ingrediants.. I was tempted, but went with a chocolate mousse instead. It was disappointing! It had good toppings - almonds and pomegranate - but should have been darker and richer. The espresso was ridiculously tiny.
Oh also for some reason in the the bathrooms the audio playing was a Spanish language learning tape (phrases repeated in English then Spanish) but with really bizarre sentences. Couldn't tell if real.
If you want to know what I did in Poland when not eating, try my posts from May.
False alarm. It's not all vegan, and whilst they do have a large range of (labelled) vegan sorbets, they don't have any vegan non-sorbet ice cream. Slightly disappointed.
TFW you politely decline an invitation to speak at a meeting and then they want an explanation why.
When I first declined, I ran through possible explanations and excuses in my head, and then decided I don't need to justify myself. Then the follow-up just threw me.
I've been working for years on saying no to stuff, on not over-committing, on focusing on few things at once. I can finally do it, and I don't owe anyone an explanation when I can't perform free labour relating to a distant side project that I'm barely involved in any more. And yet.
I have a few new Bosnian laptop stickers, and the bi-lingual 4.5 year old came over to ask what they say, and I'm like I dunno kid you're the one who speaks Bosnian but duh she can't read.
Okay so I've had a suuuper nice week on the Croatian island of Iz, with super cool people, swimming in the sea and doing yoga and eating and sleeping. The week has left me really well rested, but also socially exhausted, on top of a very heavily social June.
I'm now in a hostel in Zadar, appear to have the dorm to myself, and it's really small, extremely clean and modern and new-feeling. I leave Zadar tomorrow evening, so I can veg around here, the nearby beach, and the rawfood restaurant in town for the day. Then I have a couple more days to myself in Sofia (fingers crossed for an equally good hostel), then a few days of busses.
Hopefully then I'll be recharged in time for OGP Summit in Tbilisi in a week..
So when I want a 'private' / 'solo' place to stay, I'm actually fine with sharing a dorm with other people for sleeping. And fine with sharing a bathroom. So long as these are people I'm not obligated to socialise with (hosts, friends..).
What I really want, is a private kitchen.
But shared accommodation with individual kitchens just isn't a thing. So when I need space, I have to book a whole apartment and that gets expeeensive.
In off seasons, or in places with lots of restaurants/food culture, I get lucky with hostels where there either are hardly any people around, or people just don't use the kitchen, and that's pretty close. But the uncertainty sucks.
Anyway, I could totally live in this little hostel I'm in right now (Sunset Hostel, Zadar). Well, maybe.. when full there would be 10 people (2x 5 bed dorms). Which would work if they weren't all determined too cook.. but it's also not super close to the town center.
Who wants a top-of-my-head rough aspirational some-fantasy-involved draft of travel plans for the next year?
rest of July: transit to Georgia and back.
August: Estonia.
September: Latvia.
October: Lithuania.
November: Poland for Vipassana, Warsaw, transit; maybe drop by Sarajevo then take the fast train from Belgrade to Thessaloniki.
December: Greece.
January: Greece.
February: Bulgaria.
March: Romania. (Yes I know these last two will be cold, but I will go to the coast and staunchly enjoy it. It's the only way I can tick off all EU countries by March :s)
April: Moldova?? Parts of Serbia I haven't been to? Kosovo?
May: Macedonia.
June: Montenegro.
July: Albania.
August: Ridiculous transit (ferry from Italy) to Morocco..
September: Morocco because we fantasised this week about Aida's next yoga retreat being in Morocco.. Then ridiculous transit (buses through Spain, France and Italy) back east..
...
..pick back up on attempt to get to China. Probably spend winter in south of Turkey.
At some point I should write up a diff between what I thought I'd be doing with the last 6 months and what I actually did because these super far in advance draft plans are funny to look back on.
I'm walking along the edge of the land in a residential part of Zadar. The sky is stained pink and orange by the sunset, clouds paint wild shapes, dramatic and peaceful at the same time. It's so beautiful I can hardly breathe. The street I'm following is called 'Karma'. The ocean laps at the rocks, providing the only sound for miles, and I scramble down some stairs to dip my legs. The water is almost warm.
Suddenly the air is alive, a roar that becomes discernable as cheers, whistles, applause. Some fire crackers, some car horns. Croatia scored in the World Cup, I suppose, and I am reminded that I'm not the only person in the world.
On a related note, I may have this dorm to myself but it contains the only TV in the hostel apparently and there are people in here watching the world cup.
how long do football matches last why is this taking so long argh
You know how some cities just make sense? Shortly after you arrive, you just kind of get what's going on?
I'm 24 hours into Sofia and it doesn't make sense yet.
It's chaotic and big. In many ways it reminds me of London. There's a lot going on. On every single street is one of everything you could possibly need. There's stuff everywhere. It's broken and dilapidated; pavements are obstructed, full of holes, uneven. It's super inaccessible to anyone who uses wheels to get around. I've tripped over twice just walking normally and paying attention my surroundings. The mess in this sense reminds me of Penang. When you do occasionally stumble across a nice bit, it's a pleasant surprise, a few minutes reprieve from being hyper-alert at where your feet go. It's residential, industrial, and real, with sudden jarring interruptions for colourful, gilded, domed cathedrals or monument-filled green spaces.
It's bustling and alive, and nestled amongst the normality is art, creativity, hippie shit, and little pockets of tranquility.
Nomad life is deciding what I'm going to wear this morning based on the fact I'm going to be wearing it for the next 2+ days, through 3 countries with different climates and cultures.
oookay, time to attempt to make it the entire width of a quite wide country without buying any tickets in advance and having only a haphazard knowledge of schedules and probably no wifi. It'll be fine. See you on the other side*.
* The other side is Georgia. I'm going through Turkey.
A few days gently exploring Sofia. Food and cafe-working from some nice veg*n places, a walking tour, and general wandering before boarding a bus to Istanbul.
I made it to Batumi. Which, as promised, is a super weird place. In a good way.
But not before the bus company copped out at the border (Sarp) and said I was on my own. The border crossing itself was insane, super hot, crowded, people dragging carpets around, and even a small fight broke out. The Georgian side was more civilised, and after passport control is a helpful tourist information place, a toilet, and air conditioning. Outside the doors (you can't get back in again) is the beginning of the border town Sarpi, with an array of definitely poor-value money changers, and a chaos of busses.
I hopped in a marshrutka which set off for Batumi when it was full (entirely of locals as far as I could tell). You pay the driver on the way out, and it was 1GEL, about 20 minutes.
After checking into my hostel, I wandered around, tried to pick up a ferry ticket for in a couple of weeks (they told me to buy it online), picked up a SIM card, drank coffee, and went on a walking tour. And up the Alphabetic Tower, and ate lobiani in a small cafe.
Discovered Sunday trains are sold out, and booked a bus to get to Tbilisi instead. Sooo close to getting a train, but alas. My fate is bus.
There's this Georgian dish - ojakhuri, "family meal" - of potatoes slow cooked with mushrooms, and sometimes tomatoes, onions and slightly hot green peppers. I mean. They know what I like.
(The mushroom version is the weirdo alternative to pork, obviously, but common everywhere.)
On a related note I have extreme potato bloat right now.
There's also an eggplant with walnut paste salad and I for some reason I ordered it and it was super delicious and today my walnut allergy (or whatever it is) - a very specific head pain - is manifesting in my left ear.
Totally worth it though.
Since 80% of veggie Georgian dishes contain walnuts, maybe I can use the next couple of weeks to desensitize myself.. if it works like that.. I hope it works like that??
The thing I like about hostels is that it's equally socially acceptable to talk to any person about anything as it is to completely ignore everyone who crosses your path.
A few days of enjoying Batumi, in all it's supreme weirdness. Bizarre architecture, empty buildings, black stoney beaches, hot rainy skies, far more Turkish food than Georgian food.
I went up the Alphabet tower (which displays the Georgian alphabet around its spiral) and wandered around the coast and town. The center is chaotic and difficult to navigate and learning to play chicken with drivers and potholes is a necessity.
I did a walking tour, which included a sneak peak into an old banya which is now embedded in a hotel building, and a 1+ hour break for a wine tasting... this is Georgia.
The thing I don't like about hostels is, somebody else's alarm just went off for a full ten minutes and it was like an industrial siren sound. GOOD MORNING.
I made it to Tbilisi a little late (it should be a 6.5 hour bus from Batumi), because the bus stopped for a few silly reasons.
Little things like cows in the road.. roof is leaking rain.. side of the bus opened and suitcases flew out and had to be rescued from mountainside..
Then I accidentally didn't get out in the city center - because I didn't think the bus was stopping in the city center. And ended up at a bus station in the south I was entirely unprepared for. I found myself surrounded by taxi drivers, one of whom told me there is no metro connection here. He may have been biased, but it sure looked like a wasteland. My general desire not to get into a taxi had the effect of reducing taxi prices by 5 GEL every minute until I gave in and took a taxi to the old town. This was still not the right place, and I walked through the rain to the vegan cafe, to plan the rest of my night.
I work for Open Data Services, and if you're so inclined, you can talk to me about open data for anti-corruption, beneficial ownership and open contracting, from the data standards and tools perspective.
Spent most of the week at the Open Government Partnership Summit in Tbilisi. Helped out with a day-and-a-half workshop about Beneficial Ownership data standard, and a one hour session about org-ids and investigative data discovery.
Ate a lot.
Touristed around Tbilisi.
Took off to the mountains of Rachuli for a weekend of walking, chilling and.. surprise.. eating.
The ferry was delayed a day, so I checked into a hostel and took the opportunity to take the cable car up to the big hill overlooking Batumi. And to eat more khinkali of course, on the beach.
(in case you were wondering, I ate all the khinkali. And a salad. And then the waiter hit on me and I ran away. But the important part of this story is KHINKALI)
I've had a fairly satisfactory 24 hours. Some things that needed wrapping up are wrapped up.
This morning I went questing for supplies and got two giant shoti breads, burning hot straight from the tone (underground clay oven thing). Compared to Tbilisi, the ones in Batumi (when you eventually find them) are wide, the size of my chest - in Tbilisi they're narrow, more baguette-y. In both cases they have delicious crispy ends that never make it home. For 1 gel each, you could survive on one of these for a day if you needed to.
I also got some market fruit and veg, and a little pot of what I hope is tkemali (sour plum sauce) but might be a hot chilli paste. We'll find out.
I was a little worried about ending up at a port in Ukraine late at night next week with no language skills and no local money. This morning in the hostel kitchen I met a Ukrainian woman who taught me some useful words and exchanged some of her UAH with GEL for me. So now at least I have bus fare.
I think I know what I'm working on next week, and am prepped to do it offline if necessary. That's also nice.
And the issue of my brother being homeless in Edinburgh next month was resolved yesterday as well. Whew.
So I think I'm all set to without guilt or worry get on a wifi-less ferry of potentially unknown duration across the Black Sea this evening. So if you don't hear from me for a few days, that's why.
Giant bread supplies for my upcoming voyage, and then killing time before departure. My last meal in Batumi was from the one Chinese place. And eventually I managed to find the port and board the ferry across the Black Sea.
My twitter timeline this evening is a balanced mix of apocalyptic the world is definitely ending we won't survive the next ten years stuff, and silly jokes that make me lol.
It started raining heavily in the hour before I needed to walk to the port. I walked anyway, and was as usual faced with a giant impassable highway completely unfriendly to pedestrians, and no indication of how to get to the port. I found it eventually, completely soaked. Waited for almost two hours under a lean-to with other bedraggled passengers, and went through some half-hearted attempt at passport control I think. Or at least checking the ticket name and passport name matched. Boarded, waiting around some more, got a room key. I have a two bed room, and so far it doesn't look like I'm sharing it with anyone.
So far there are many male truck drivers, a couple of families with kids and old people, and three sets of travelling young couples from various locations, who speak English. I haven't seen any of them since I boarded though.
This ferry apparently has a sauna, and wifi that only works once it's in Ukraine (by which time it's not much good). Mealtimes are in strict 30 minute slots, but I'm not sure which timezone they run on.
Currently still in port; no idea when we'll actually leave.
"Shemomechama" is a Georgian phrase, translating roughly to the passive "it happened that I ate everything." I like to think of it as "I accidentally all the food." Which is very much what happened during my two weeks in Georgia.
Traditional (or, some would argue, modern-tourist-adapted-traditional) Georgian food is actually vegan heaven. When you peer around the meat and cheese, you discover a whole world of beans, bread, potatoes and mushrooms. They do great things with veggies, particularly aubergine, and I've never had such spectacular and simple salads. My usual 'vegan in' posts are a list of places to eat, but in this case I'm going to do a list of dishes, most of which you can get in any random Georgian restaurant you find on the street. At the end I'll also list a few places across Tbilisi and Batumi that I thought were particularly good.
Other things to note about Georgian cuisine is that it's generally served family-style.. that is, huge plates, ideal for sharing. If you're eating on your own, you really must resist ordering many dishes even if they look like sides because this is too much food. If you're with a group though - even a meat-eating group - it's ace. Because so many totally normal common side dishes and well-loved mains are vegan! On more than one occasion I sat back and let other people order a bunch of stuff, and there was always stuff I could eat.
Fasting
One of the reasons Georgian food is so vegan-friendly is because of the Orthodox fasting periods. Wednesdays, Fridays, and many many special occasions, many adopt essentially a pesca-vegan diet - they can't have any food from land animals. As a result, many restaurants have a 'fasting menu', or at least understand the concept of vegan if you ask if something is okay for fasting. And since Georiga is not the kind of country to add secret fish to things, ordering anything from a fasting menu that isn't explicitly fish is pretty safe.
Lobio
Lobio is bean stew. It comes in a clay pot, and is delicious. That is all.
Mchadi
Mchadi is Georgian cornbread. It's vegan, and soaks up the juice from lobio like a treat. Comes in fried and non-fried varieties, and may be thick and chunky or flat and round. Fried ones can be seen in the foreground of this meal.
Lobiani
Lobiani is bean paste in bread. There are so many different kinds! And of varying qualities. Sometimes, the bean paste is just dry and maybe not even seasoned. If you're around for a while, it's worth scouting out different places to find the best lobiani.
If you get it from a bakery or streetside 'fast food' type place, you'll likely end up with a flaky pastry type deal. This is fine, but not my favourite. An improvement on this theme was from Literature Cafe in Batumi, where the lobiani was more of an upright giant-dumpling shaped pastry; the bean filling was particularly good. In restaurants, it tends to come as a pizza-sized round flatbread. Bread-wise, this is my favourite (again, the bean filling varies from place to place), partly because I'm a sucker for flatbread, but also because the bean-bread ratio is more balanced.
Ajarian lobiani, which is fairly widely available in Batumi (since it's in Ajara), is a regional take on their famous khachapuri. I have to digress here, since khachapuri isn't getting its own entry in this list. Khachapuri is a very famous Georgian food, and in general is cheesebread. The Ajarian take on khachapuri involves a boat-shaped loaf of bread, carved out and filled to the brim with cheese, butter, and egg, heart-attack-on-a-plate style. So Ajarian lobiani then, obviously, is the bread-boat full of beans! Usually served with some pickled chillis. Whoever thought of that is a genius. This is giant meal. I got mine from Porto Franco, but many large Georgian restaurants will have it.
I'm going to digress again to tell you about bakeries. Georgian bakeries have a giant round clay oven called a tone, which is like a partially submerged well of FIRE. They make bread dough, and slap it onto the burning hot side of the oven for just a few minutes, before peeling it off all baked and delicious. Tonis puri is bread that is baked in this way. THUS tonis lobiani is, you guessed it, bread dough stuffed with bean paste and baked in a tone. I got it in at a very wee bakery next to Irmale's Cafe in Tbilisi. The bread is obviously fantastic all by itself, straight from the oven. The beans inside were a bit dry; I don't know if this is a side-effect of the cooking method, or just this one place.
Khinkali
Khinkali are dumplings. The dough is vegan. So, the fillings? See a fasting menu for potato and mushroom options. Traditially they're meat or cheese, and you may have to hunt a bit for the the veg alternatives. I was under the impression for most of my time in Georgia that the fasting khinkali are a perfectly ordinary traditional Georgian food, but on my last night a hostel employee plus an old lady she found to back her up absolutely insisted to me this is not Georgian food and was only invented for tourists. It was way more common in Tbilisi than in Batumi, in any case.
I don't care when or why they were invented though, because they are fucking delicious. The first time I went to a khinkali house in Batumi, the potato and mushroom ones were on the menu but they were out. I then spent a week craving a food I'd never eaten, until I was finally satisifed in Pasanauri in Tbilisi. The correct way to eat khinkali is to pick them up by the knob at the top (lifehack: stick a fork in if it's too hot or slippery to grab and you're too impatient to wait 5 minutes), make a small bite to suck the juice out (potato ones don't have juice, but mushroom ones do) and then eat the rest, leaving the knob that you're holding on your plate, so that you can count how many you demolish. There are various positive superstitions about people who manage to eat khinkali without getting any juice on the plate. You're not supposed to put sauce on them or dip them in anything, but really if there's tkemali on the table whatcha gonna do?
Most places seem to list khinkali on the menu with a per-dumpling price, and have a minimum order of five. Five is a reasonably sensible number to eat all by oneself as long as you're hungry and don't order anything else. Heh. They don't let you mix and match fillings though.. so the first time I finally went for khinkali obviously the only thing I could do was to order five mushroom and five potato ones. I wasn't alone.. but neither of my lunchmates wanted to eat my khinkali. So I ate ten. And some lobio. And some bread. It was great. It was a slight struggle, but I have no regrets.
Mushrooms on a ketsi
I don't know if there's a Georgian name for this. A ketsi is a clay dish, and if you order mushrooms on a ketsi, you get a clay dish with sizzling, delicious, juicy mushrooms. Why wouldn't you?
Be careful not to get a cheesed-up version (eg. with sulguni).
Bonus points: if you're in the mountains and it's mushroom season, you can get really expensive fancy mushrooms that will blow your mind and are worth every penny (we did so at a roadside restaurant called Zgapari).
Ojakhuri with mushrooms
Ojakhuri is typically a dish where potatoes are slow cooked with pork.. but you can get it with mushrooms instead. And it's delicious. When I ordered it, it had some onions, tomatoes, and chilli peppers thrown into the mix.
Ajapsandali
Ajapsandali is like ratatouille - a tomatoey vegetable stew, usually with aubergine, capsicum, and other seasonal veggies. Simple, but, like all things Georgian, delicious.
Phkali
Phkali are a cold starter or side dish, consisting of different coloured balls of mush. They're vegetables minced with walnuts and seasonings. You'll find spinach, aubergine of course, and beet commonly. Aubergine and red peppers may also be grilled, sliced, and spread with walnut mush then rolled up. They can be exceptionally tasty, but they can also be kind of meh. They were a common conference buffet food option, often the only vegan thing around, so I ended up eating more than I would have given my walnut allergy. I don't know if it's a faux-pas to smoosh them onto bread but.. that's also nice.
Salad
Cucumber and tomato salad is a staple at every table and somehow manages to be thoroughly delicious. The fresh seasonable vegetables help of course, and liberal dressings of locally sourced rich sunflower oil also contribute. You can usually order it with or without walnuts.
There are various other kinds of salads too. Just watch out for ones with cheese, and you'll be safe. A plate of 'greens' is actually mostly fresh herbs like tarragon, maybe with other strong things like spring onion and radish. Which can be pretty intense to just chew on, obviously meant to accompany the other food you're ordering.
Pickles
PICKLES. They pickle everything. You can order mixed pickles, or plates of specific pickles. Pickled tomatoes may be whole juicy red ones (so good) or green tomatoes. Cucumber, obviously. Pickled chillis are also common. A weirder one is jonjoli flowers, which are bascially weeds. I loved them, several people I met don't. Pickle all the things! I love them so much.
Sauces
Tkemali is a sour plum sauce. It's really good with everything. Get some with every meal.
Adjika is a spicy deep red sauce, which reminds me subtly of Korean gochujang. Also fantastic, would eat with every meal. See a picture of adjika with greens.
Bazhe (sometimes spelled baje) is a really delicious walnut sauce. How do I know it was delicious? I am allergic to walnuts and I ate a bunch of this sauce on stuff and it was WORTH EVERY MINUTE OF PAIN.
Churchkhela
You see them dangling from souvenir shops, street carts and market stalls, churchkhela are a traditional sweet made from stringing up a line of nuts and then dipping them repeatedly in fruit syrup. The syrup sets, and the amount of dips determines the thickness and shape of the final strand, and the colour depends on the fruit juice that was was used. You'll see red pomegranate, purple grape and brownish white grape. I haven't figured out what the green ones are yet. Mostly they use walnuts, but I managed to get hazelnut ones. I hear the may also be made with peanuts and almonds, but I didn't find them. They look like sausages, but don't worry, they're all-natural vegan candy.
Restaurants
Kiwi Cafe (Tbilisi)
Kiwi is a vegan cafe in Tbilisi that has been around for a while. They were once attacked by sausage-weilding neo-nazis, and had to move location. The new location is really spacious and pleasant. There's power and wifi, friendly staff, and great food.
It's a good place for a vegan (or anyone) to take a break from traditional Georgian cuisine, and eat things like pizza, burger, curry, salads, sandwiches, pasta, apple pie, milkshakes.. and more. It's reasonably priced - not above average. I went here a bunch of times.
Irmale's Cafe (Tbilisi)
A brand new, very small "healthy vegan friendly" cafe outside of the old town. I happened to be staying around the corner, so I dropped in here a number of times. The smoothies packed with 'superfoods' are not the cheapest, but really good. There are cold soups and salads which I didn't try. Buckwheat pancakes with two fillings - scrambled tofu with sprouts, or cashew cream with fruit - are both really tasty but very small. A light breakfast at most. There's an array of tiny healthy cakes, energy balls, cheese cakes, all made with love. The coffee is good. There's wifi and power, and outdoor seating, but not a lot of seating in general (a table for two, and four bar stools). I anticipate the menu growing as they find their feet.
Mama Terra (Tbilisi)
I didn't actually eat here, but it's a vegetarian (mostly vegan) place almost next door to Kiwi. I did go to the secret bar behind the bookcase at the back, which you only know about if you know about it...
Pasanauri (Tbilisi and Batumi)
This is a traditional Georgian restaurant, of which there are two (at least) in Tbilisi and one on the beach in Batumi. They have a whole fasting menu, which is a filtered down vegan-friendly version of the regular menu, on the back page. Handy dandy.
This is where I ate ten khinkali, and a bunch of other things, and went to both branches in Tbilisi and the one in Batumi. The khinkali are particularly good because they dough is thin and the fillings are well seasoned.
Luca Polare (Tbilisi and Batumi)
A chain of ice cream shops. They're ten a penny on the Batumi seafront, and I ran into at least three in Tbilisi. They have soya milk for coffees, and a bunch of vegan sorbets. They make 'fruit frappes' which are sorbet with fruit juice too, and seem to always have one vegan cake (labelled!). They tend to have wifi and power, air conditioning, and a nice atmosphere to hang about. They're also open aaall the time (8am to 2am).
Porto Franco (Batumi)
A Georgian restaurant that's part of a hotel, I was surprised to be recommended such a place by a local. I had ajarian lobiani here, and it was really delicious and all good prices. It opens early (because of the hotel I guess) and it's rare to find places for breakfast in Georgia, so that was nice.
Uncle Feng's (Batumi)
A Chinese restaurant, with several vegan things labelled on the menu. They were out of tofu when I went, but I ate delicious spicy ("Chinese spicy not European spicy") handmade noodles with vegetables, and a pot of Chinese tea. Pretty busy, but a nice atmosphere, and power and wifi. A good option for a break from Georgian food.
After a reasonable but short sleep, an announcement at 7am sent us down for passport control, where we got stamped out of Georgia (and they kept our passports). Two hours later.. at 8am Ukrainian time (this boat runs on Ukrainian time obviously) we were summoned for breakfast.. which was a small plate of some of the worst looking non-foods I have ever seen (plastic omelet, a distressing pink sausage..). I ate my single slice of tomato and cucumber, drank tea with lemon (there isn't even coffee) and couldn't even make myself eat the terrible white bread. Fortunately I massively overstocked on supplies so I actually won't starve.
(There's no wifi but I still have 3G because.. we're still in Georgia. Still.)
Tales from the Black Sea (aka the ferry from Batumi to Odesa)
Walking to the port from Batumi is not super easy. It's not far - about 20 minutes from the cable car - but not a pedestrian friendly route. Also the layout of the roads is different from what I could see on maps.me. If you think you can follow the road around, you can for a while until the pavement literally crumbles into nothing. I traipsed through smashed up concrete on the side of the road for a while, as I thought that was the only way, but eventually it was just fenced off, just as the road starts sloping up and curving around to the left. It's a big and busy highway, so I didn't fancy walking along the side of the road. I contemplated squeezing past the fence, but then wondered if I'd fare better on the other side of the road, presuming of course I'd be able to cross back again when I reached the actual port. By this point there was a large bollard in the middle of the road, so I backed up to where the pavement was whole again, and there was no bollard, and crossed.
It became apparently on this side that the road forked; one sort of side road, which initially I thought was more of a layby for trucks, ran alongside the main highway. There was clearly no pavement on the other side of the highway either, so I walked along the layby road a little way.. and a little further. I'm not sure why some instinct told me to keep going, even though it was really not clear where it led, because this turned out to be right way. The layby turned into a real road which went under the curving highway and.. led to the port! There wasn't any real footpath here either, but it was much much less busy than the other road, and vehicles that did pass were going a lot slower.
Under the bridge/highway there was a carpark of sorts; pass straight across that and over the next road, and the ferry waiting area appears. It was visible due to the huddle of other soggy passengers under a small shelter. I saw two friendly looking people with bikes, and confirmed they are waiting for the ferry. It was about 8pm by the time I got there, having been told to go for boarding at 2130. The couple, W and A, are from Ukraine and had been cycling around the Georgian coast. We chatted about travel and Georgian politics before eventually boarding well after 2130. After fleeting passport and ticket checks, before finding the way to the ferry itself, I met another young couple with backpacks, in good humour despite the weather and the wait; P from Germany and R from Mexico.
Day 1, after boarding
In the line to pick up our room keys at the ferry reception, I met yet another couple; O1 who carries a UK passport but doesn't sound British and handwaves "long story" when asked, and O2 from Belarus. O1 found many things to complain about. Upon collection of our keys, our passports gained a green sticker with a number on it, and further information was scribbled onto our tickets - "first shift" (for meals) and an assigned table number (I was on table 18, it turned out, with O1, O2, P, R, and a family of three).
Amongst the other passengers, all of whom seem to be Russian-speaking (except for three grey-haired queue-jumping German biker-types) are a few families with young kids. The rest are either lads on a booze cruise, or the drivers of the various transport vehicles on board.
I'm in room 8020, which has two beds in bunk formation, a table with a chair, a wardrobe, three power outlets, a servicable bathroom and a view of the ocean. I waited with baited breath to see if my other bunk would be filled, and to my relief I remain alone. It was always unclear from the website whether I was booking a bed or a room. Even now, I don't know; it does say it's 'shared'. By the time I got to make a reservation, the 4 and 6 berth shared cabins were long gone.
I walked on the deck and took some pictures of Batumi after sunset, with all it's silly lights.
We didn't leave and didn't leave, and I stayed up late writing blog posts and waiting to sleep after we left. I gave up, and slept anyway.
Day 2, after breakfast
I woke at 6 and looked out of the window to see we were still in the Port of Batumi. I woke again at 7, just before an announcement came through a little speaker right next to my head announcing it's time for passport control on the deck below. Mercifully an English announcement followed the Russian. I met O1 and O2 in the line, and we waited for some time. Queuing was not particularly orderly, constrained only perhaps by the narrowness of the corridors. Eventually my passport was stamped, and kept.
I returned to my room until two hours later, on Ukrainian time, breakfast was announced through the speaker - "don't be late."
Breakfast was the most distressing pink sausage, a plasticky looking omelet, and a single slice of tomato and cucumber. The salad was gone before my butt hit the chair, and I tried to chew on some white bread, but it was quite quite terrible. No coffee, only tea and lemon. O1 was particularly upset about the coffee dearth, and I promised to bring the remains of my Turkish grinds the next morning, and gave him my omelet. Nobody wanted my terrible sausage. Back in my room, I ate Georgian bread and adjika.
We finally started moving after 1030. I have no idea if this was the expected schedule, and passengers are normally tricked into boarding the night before departure, or if we are running late. Guess I'll find out. I kind of hope we're late. I went out on deck to take pictures as we passed Batumi seaside. I heard the kids in the room next door violently throwing up.
I slept, and read, and thought about writing.
Day 2, after lunch
I was even a little hungry by lunchtime, but as soon as I saw three glistening parts of a bird with bones protruding on top of my heap of rice and smattering of presumably sweet and sour vegetable goop, my appetite deserted me. P the German offered me his salad, which were thankfully in separate bowls, so I ate two paltry offerings of lettuce, pepper and cucumber. I picked at the edge of my rice but the disembodied legs really weren't doing it for me. I thought I'd be able to eat around it; after all, meat on other peoples' plates at the same table doesn't usually put me off food unless it's particularly grotesque. But to get at the rice I had to get closer to the body parts than I could stomach.
The kitchen is staffed by tall, sultry Russian speaking skinheads, but there is one lady who was helping to clear dishes more on my eye level. On the way out of the dining room I managed to catch her, and pleaded on behalf of myself and O1 - who is vegetarian - for a plate without meat at the next meal. She asked if eggs are okay, so I elaborated.. yes for O, not for me. She relayed this message to one of the tall dudes, and everything seems to be okay. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I'm going to eat my Uncle Feng's Chinese noodle leftovers.
Day 2, after dinner
Rumour has it that we'll arrive late on Monday, around midnight. The 'guy in the bar' said so, via O2.
Dinner was successfully meat free for O1 and I; potatoes and pickled vegetables. It was plenty. The side salad had a liberal sprinkling of grated cheese this time so I ignored it. There were chocolate marshmallow things too. P seemed to really enjoy his, so I gracefully donated mine to the cause of the hungry German.
I watched the last 20 minutes of Sully, all of After the Ball - both movies I'd caught snippets of on buses this month. I photographed every page of my full notebook so I can trash it, and backed up my laptop onto my harddrive. I spent some time reading Blindsight on the 9th deck in the sun. I might return there before sunset.
Day 3, after breakfast
I took coffee to breakfast, but O1 didn't come down. I told O2 that if he wants to knock on my door for extra food, I have way too much. Which I do. My meat-free egg-free breakfast this morning was of course a bowl of cottage cheese. But there was optional oatmeal with didn't seem to be milky, so I ate that instead, and it was more than enough. I really need to eat more of my own supplies though..
I have a slight encroaching headache, so I'm going to go back to sleep a bit..
I watched Wonder Woman, which turns out to be all about Chris Pine, and A Wrinkle in Time which is also all about Chris Pine (I did not know Chris Pine was in either of these), read Blindsight, and napped.
Day 3, after lunch
Apparently the ferry stopped for two to three hours earlier, to do tests because the weather is good. Now we're due to arrive at 8 or 9am tomorrow. Updates courtesy of P, who asked at reception. Not sure what I'll do. Maybe go to Orpheus Hostel anyway, where I am booked to stay tonight, and drop my bag and take a wander around Odesa. I could take a night train straight to Lviv and arrive on Wednesday. Maybe that's better, work-wise. And general timing. Then I can leave Lviv at the weekend and have some time in Tartu before Tallinn. Or I could spend one night in Odesa and go to Lviv on Wednesday. I guess it just depends on the bus or train options. It'll be nice if I can get a train straight to Lviv.. and I suppose a two hour change in Kyiv isn't so bad. But if I'm going to Kyiv, I should spend a day there too perhaps? I'll think about this more when I have internet.
Lunch was a giant pile of cold spaghetti, with orange mush of unknown origins. Everyone else had chicken on a stick. There was soup, as usual, and two bowls of a meat-free edition on the table for O1 and I. It had mushrooms in, and was pretty good. All I needed was soup, but I ate spaghetti anyway.. Feeling bloated now. Also melon.
We were summoned to reception to fill out customs declarations. The forms were in Turkish.. obviously.. so every single passenger needed help filling them out, which wasn't the most organised affair. One of the questions I was told which box to tick, but the guy couldn't tell me in English what the question was. OH WELL. JUST SIGNING THINGS I CAN'T READ. NO BIG DEAL.
Think I'm gonna take Blindsight up on deck while everyone is fucking around in reception.
Day 3, after dinner
I finished Blindsight, and tinkered with sloph and read through the parts of Quest for Brothers I've already written and maybe one day soon I'll write some more. Oh, and I learned most of the Russian alphabelt, so I can sort of read signs now.
Dinner: potatoes! And pickles! The salad had solid chunks of something feta-like in; I picked mine out and traded for O1's olives. There was chocolate cake (and fish), for those who wanted it.
Day 4, arrival
Announcements only in Russian this morning! Great fun. Especially the important ones, like the 7am "pack your stuff immediately and go to reception to change your room key for your passport." Fantastic. Good job I bumped into O2 at just the right time so she could tell me what the instructions were. No breakfast today. Instead, waiting in non-lines for many hours. First to retrieve passport and hand over room key. I just dumped my backpack in a corner in reception, it didn't seem to be going anywhere. A line was forming for passport control / customs, but we were definitely still in the process of mooring, so I figured border agents aren't coming on board any time soon and went to wander around the deck.
I was right. I joined the line when people in uniform eventually appeared. Swathes of people skipped the line, for whatever reason, and we waited at least an hour to get our passport stamped. I was asked "why are you going to Odesa?" Good question mate.. cos that's where the ferry stops? I mumbled something he probably didn't understand, and that was enough. He also wanted an address.. so I showed him the address of the hostel I had booked for the night I'd just missed, where I wouldn't end up going.. which was also fine.
After passport control, it took a while for them to actually let us off the ferry. When they did, we were met by more dudes who wanted to see our passports, and ask us what we had in our bags. They were happy for P to speak for both R and I as clearly he must own the womenz who were trailing behind him, and then pointed us at a minibus. We got on that and.. waited some more. 20 minutes maybe. Eventually all foot passengers made it, and it drove us.. 30 seconds around the corner, to the customs office. We definitely could have walked. There we - you guessed it - waited some more. The next level of the process was to pass our bags through a scanner of some kind, and then we were free.
Only.. we were in a carpark. By a port. Freedom sucks.
We (O1, O2, P, R and I) bumped back into A and W, and between the Russian speakers they extracted the location of a bus stop from someone, and A and W guided us. A bunch of other random people followed us too. It was quite a trek along some bumpy roads, until we reached a main road that busses were clearly passing by on. W took off on his bike to find the actual bus stop, and returned a while later having found a spot where "people are waiting but the bus didn't stop." Well, that was the best we had. A and W cycled away, and the rest of us trekked to maybe-the-bus-stop. Eventually the number 25 approached and we waved it down. It was full, but somehow there was still space for five people. Our backpacks went in the boot, and we crammed in standing sardine style. It was a marshrutka, so it was already a tiny cramped minibus type thing. It cost 22UAH each for person + baggage to Odesa train station. I think it took at 30 minutes, but it felt like eternity of balancing, swaying, and smooshing into other sweaty people. I paid the bus fare for P and R, cos they didn't have any local currency yet. No biggie, that's like 0.60EUR each.
We milled around in the street for a while, and eventually got ourselves together. O1 and O2 went to find a cab to their lodgings, which turned out to be very far away, and I followed P and R to their hostel, which was a 20 minute walk away, and was closer than the one I'd booked for the night before.
Hostel Komuna was absolutely invisible from the street. With the help of an old woman on a balcony and another guest attempting to get in (who was on the phone to someone in the hostel, I think) we made it. For reference, it's at number 41 where there's a small alleyway. There are absolutely no signs, in any language. There's a door on the right of the alley, with a keycode. The other guest got the code (417 all at the same time) on the phone, and we followed him up several flights of stairs, to another unlabelled door, perhaps on the top floor. We buzzed and were let in. It felt like an apartment, and a bit of a dingy one at that. P and R had a double room, and I had a bed in the dorm. It felt very much like there are many long term residents. It's not super clean, and certainly not new, and there's no air conditioning. But it'll do for a night. The people who welcomed us are friendly.
Every time I checked in the last couple of weeks, there were absolutely no available trains from Odesa to Lviv. But the Ukrainian woman I met in the Batumi hostel had said there are sometimes last minute tickets available, so I looked again.. and sure enough, an almost empty train was available tomorrow morning. It's 11 hours :O but there are no night trains, so it'll have to do. I spent an hour in the dorm calculating my onward travel plans - a few days in Lviv, then Tartu, before I reach Tallinn - and I think I'm all set.
I ate some delicious healthy stuff at Vegano Hooligano, a lovely place conveniently around the corner from the hostel, and now I'm going to wander around the city..
Practicing my Russian reading skills by sounding out every sign I see as I wander around. It's especially delightfully rewarding when it comes out as a western word I know with a slightly wonky accent xD
Also sometimes I get out something I recognise from Bosnian or Polish or Czech which is also cool (mostly these are foods).
My impression of Odesa is that it's at least as weird as Batumi, but in subtly different ways. I only spent one day there though, following the ferry from Georgia.
Odesa is mostly Russian speaking, full of tourists, and fancy old buildings. The sea front is madness. The beaches are probably nice but you can't see them for the people, loungers, and sun umbrellas. I actually don't think I've seen beaches so efficiently packed; from the wall to the ocean, not in a inch is wasted. They're also lined, Bali-style, with hip bars with nice seats, DJs, cocktails etc. Of course it's all vastly cheaper than Bali. About the same amount of trash. With temperatures pushing the mid 30s when I was there, you really don't need to go all the way to Asia. I think venturing further south might have lead me to quieter beaches, but I didn't have time. There's a large green park space around the coast too, which hopefully means awful apartment block construction by the sea will be limited (unlike Batumi).
As I was a day later than planned, I ended up not staying in the hostel I originally planned. Hostel Komuna was generally terrible; packed, hot, loud.
I took the train at 10am the next day. The station is utterly confounding, even with rudimentary Russian reading. There are loads of signs with trains, times and routes, but none of them had my train. I did find it closer to departure time by just wandering the platforms, but it was a bit worrying that signs appearing to list the full day's departures just didn't include mine. Oh also it was scheduled one minute earlier than my ticket said, and there are two ways to spell Lviv in Russian.
The train itself was 11 hours. I got the ticket the day before, online. There had been no tickets at all in the weeks ahead, but a woman in the hostel in Batumi told me they sometimes add new last minute tickets. Good tip! From Odesa to Lviv is 600UAH - less than 20 EUR.
I thought I was choosing a window seat, but turned out to be a top bunk. Each carriage is divided into small 4-berth compartments, and I was sharing with an older couple and a younger dude who may or may not have been travelling with them.
It was hot as fuck, and burly Ukrainian men of all ages take this opportunity to go shirtless without fail.
Once the train was moving, airflow from the open windows kept us alive. At one point the conductor came through to close all the windows and maybe said something about air conditioning. Half an hour later it may have been slightly cooler, but really that was bullshit and eventually I opened the windows again (when my carriage-mates were asleep..)
There was power, but no wifi. I slept and read and worked. I couldn't see out of the window from the top bunk. There's no storage except for under the bottom bunks, which must be lifted to access it. I asked one of the people in the lower bunk if they would move so I could use it, and succeeded.
We arrived to Lviv on time, just as the sun was setting, and I made it to my hostel before dark.
For the next few days I was thoroughly looked after by members of Quinta Group, of ProZorro/OCDS/open government procurement fame. I worked from their office for two days, and was well fed and entertained. Such a wonderful welcome surely shaped my impression of Lviv, but I'll definitely spend more time there.
First, I had to forget Russian and re-learn key phrases in Ukrainian.
The old town is cute, there are lots of green spaces, and universities. There are many nice restaurants, cafes, dessert places and more, and in the evenings the city center is really alive. Also good second hand shops!
It's a very walkable city, but for further out it's well covered by buses, trams and marshrutkas. Also for when it's raining - which it does, often. Buses and trams are 5 UAH (about 0.16 EUR) for any single ride which is a pretty good deal. Lviv also has a unique fare-paying system which I've never seen the likes of before. You board through whichever door is convenient, then hand your fare to the nearest person, who will in turn pass it to the front of the bus until it reaches the driver. If you only have a 100UAH note, no problem, just say (in Ukrainian) how many people you're paying for and your change will return by the same route. If you're on a packed bus and someone hands you some money.. don't be confused, just pass it forward.
I climbed Castle Hill, which has some ruins but not really a castle. I went to the Lychakiv Cemetery which is incredible. There are huge fancy tombs and headstones and lots of famous people are buried there. It's also beautifully full of trees. Stryisky Park is also gorgeous, with wild and curated places, lakes, trails and cafes. A good place to disappear into nature within walking distance of the city center. While I was there it went from hot and sunny to torrential downpour with dramatic lightning and thunder. Wasn't much to be done, except get wet.
Lviv bus station is inconveniently far from the city. Buses and trolleybuses go there though of course. It also had a big sign of every bus and departure platform, except for mine. (I asked, and was told where to wait.) I departed in the evening, bound for Riga.
One evening I spent with a table full of locals, including a variety of dietary preferences, trying to think of a Ukrainian dish that was ordinarily vegan. The criteria being that you could walk into any Ukrainian restaurant and order it without modification. Nobody could come up with anything. The closest we got was borsch without meat - nobody was sure how common it would be, but seemed fairly confident you can request it without. And you need to make sure they leave it to you to add sour cream, and don't dollop it on for you. Someone said they were sure in some places varenyky (dumplings) must be vegan, but I understood the traditional recipe for the dough to involve both eggs and sour cream.
Nonetheless, there were a handful of lovely vegan cafes in Odes and Lviv, so I did not starve to death.
Vegano Hooligano (Odesa)
There are two branches, though I only visited the one closest to the train station. The food is healthy Asian-inspired-fusion. A variety of soups, wraps, burgers, salad bowls and cakes, featuring lots of tofu. Also an extensive drinks and breakfast menu. I ate in a couple of times and took food to go on the train. There's an English menu, and one of the waiters was very friendly and happy to speak English. There's power and wifi, and plenty of seating, and they take card.
Zelen (Odesa)
A vegetarian cafe near the train station... which was not open during the hours on happycow.
True (Odesa)
A fancy feeling place, pescatarian, with everything well labelled and an emphasis on health. Lots of raw dishes, and many of those containing honey can be veganised.
I took the waitress's recommendation and ate a very delicious mushroom steak with lentils. It was a pretty big portion. Also latte with hazelnut milk.
Agrus (Lviv)
A vegan (except for occasional honey) bakery 30 seconds from my hostel. I had breakfast here several times and afternoon snacks too. There is a lot of space, power and wifi, and they also sell various eco products like bags. On one occasion I also took a pie to go for lunch later. A welcoming atmosphere, and the food is very good quality.
Omnomnom (Lviv)
All vegan with a nice vibe in the evening, and extensive menu. I regret that I only went once. I ate a burger; it was good, but I should have ordered fries too. The burger had pickles including pickled ginger which was fantastic; and an omnivore at the table revealed he hadn't realised the cheese is vegan. The hotdogs look amazing.
I also tried peanut milk for the first time here! In a flat white. Great. Pear tart with caramel sauce was a delicious dessert.
Dogs Like Ducks (Lviv)
A small hotdog place with power and wifi but fairly minimal seating. A very friendly atmosphere. Also great hotdogs! They're quite small; I ate one which included beans as a topping. Good for more of a snack than a full meal I think, but only 55 UAH (about 1.50EUR) each. They also have some healthy raw cakes, homemade lemonade and milkshakes, and a few vegan groceries for sale.
Green (Lviv)
A fairly large restaurant with more of an upscale vibe and no wifi. They have a really varied menu, all vegetarian with vegan labelled. Fortunately I went with a large group so I got to sample several things. For myself I chose the most unusual dish on the menu; a foamy sponge ball with cashew cheese and vegetables in the center, with salty bubbly not-caviar on top.
They have interesting fruit cocktails, which can be requested without honey or sugar, as well as some fantastic raw desserts.
They have a large range of groceries to buy in the entrance as well.
Little Green (Lviv)
Owned by the same people as Green, but with a completely different menu and vibe. Still no wifi though. Thai noodles and soup are good options, and they have several pitas with seitan and tofu.
Marusia (Lviv)
This is cheap fast food, Ukrainian style. Lots of kinds of dumplings, including a hummus filled one which is ostensibly vegan. Not quite traditional, but at least I got to try varenyky. Pretty good, well seasoned with paprika and very filling.
Other stuff
Lviv and Odesa are both absolutely bursting with cute coffee shops, stands, and windows. None of them have plant milk on the menu, but most of them carry soya, almond and even hazelnut if you ask for it. Probably best to learn the Ukrainian (in Lviv) and Russian (in Odesa) words for these to be on the safe side.
Ukraine is pretty damn good at bread, so dropping into a bakery for some interesting rye or fruity loaf can be a good snack option. Many bakeries also offer coffee and wifi.
I tried kвас (kvass), a traditional drink made from fermented rye bread (non-alcoholic). It's sweetened to varying degrees with fruit or sugar. I had some handy locals in Lviv to directy me to a place where it wouldn't be too sweet. Apparently we don't trust the old ladies selling it from sketchy barrels on the side of Castle Hill. It tastes like across between coca cola and beer.. but like in a good way. In any case it was very refreshing on a hot day.
As soon as I get to a place where I'm gonna stay for longer than a few days, I'm going to buy a jar of peanut butter. I'm so fucking excited about this.
Originally I'd planned to take the direct bus from Odesa to Tallinn. The flaw in this plan was that it goes through Belarus and getting a fully visa for a stretch on the bus is not practical or financially sensible. Hence the detour to Lviv.
I ended up with a change in Riga and an end destination of Tartu.
The Polish border is one hour out of Lviv. I was quite looking forward to a border crossing at a sensible time followed by an uninterrupted night of sleep. Hahaha no such luck. The bus was stuck at the border for a full six hours. Four in between Ukraine and Poland, pausing in lines of stopping altogether in carparks. We stopped at Duty Free for a while.
When border control came aboard and collected all the passports, half an hour or more later they were all returned except for mine. The bus driver looked worried and tracked it down for me pretty quick.
Eventually we progressed to entry to Poland, and the bus was fully unloaded. We hauled our luggage through customs and then.. the bus disappeared. A further two hours were spent perching on suitcases in the carpark outside Polish customs. Nobody had any idea what was going on. I wondered if this duration of delay was factored into the schedule, but figured I'd probably be missing my connection. At least it was still warm.
At 0230 the bus finally materialised and I got to sleep.
Around mid-morning the next day, it broke down. We waited for a couple of hours by a highway in Lithuania. Other buses stopped and picked up the passengers they could fit. I ended up on an Ecolines from Vilnius to Riga, sitting next to someone who was planning to make the same Tartu connection as me. This bus was scheduled to arrive shortly before the Tartu bus departs, and the latter often waited for it. Hope!
And indeed I did make the connection with one minute to spare, and successfully got to Tartu. The funny part is that if the original bus hadn't broken down I probably wouldn't have made it.
I am struck by the attitudes of people in authority on public transport in different regions. The guy from Vilnius told me that even if you're late for a bus, usually they will wait for a while, and call you, and make every effort to see you aboard. In Western Europe I get the distinct impression that the rules matter far more than people; if you're late you miss it, and it's nobody's fault but your own. I once had to elbow my way through Victoria Coach Station with a minute to spare after a 3 hour delay on the District Line, and was technically on time for my bus and it hadn't actually left yet, but they almost didn't let me board because I wasn't 15 minutes early, and gave me a really hard time about it like I had done this on purpose. On the other hand, if you go much further east, they just sort of don't give a shit. They'd leave you at a service station because counting the passengers is too much like work. So maybe the Baltics is where one finds the peak of public transit customer service?
A few days in Tartu, walking all through the old town. Including the university campus, botanical garden, Toom hill with cathedral ruins, a swim in Anna Kanal mini-beach, and Supilinn, the Soup District. Tartu has lots of statues, sculptures and ancient houses, all well signposted with the history and interesting facts.
I love tiny apartments which make creative use of vertical space.
One thing isn't even that amazing and is totally normal and common the Baltics is having the drying rack over the sink, my god it's life changing, why hasn't the rest of the world caught onto this yet??
But also ceiling beds up ladders. If there's anything that will make me go overbudget for an AirBnB it's a bed up a ladder.
In Bratislava in April I stayed in an absurdly small place but it worked for a small person. In Tallinn I have a very similar place, but a levelled up version. It's bigger (but still wee), less structurally dodgy and has two ceiling beds up a ladder.
My kingdom for restaurant websites which have a text-only one page version of the menu without so much javascript that google translate can't even parse it and nothing is copypastable.
I'm a perpetual digital nomad, but committed to not flying at the beginning of 2018.
I'm not a climate scientist, but as a recent academic I took major advantage of the international conference circuit to travel as much as possible during my PhD. I never liked flying, but I wanted to see the world and that just seemed like what you had to do. In retrospect the sheer volume of academic travel is quite obscene - especially given the number of people I meet who complain about having to do it so much!
In 2014 I found myself four events in continental Europe a week apart each, and persuaded my institute to pay for a three week Interrail pass instead of a bunch of flights. I took a bus from Edinburgh to Paris (W3C Working Group meeting), hitchhiked from Paris to Dusseldorf (IndieWebCamp hackathon), then a train to Innsbruck (tourism), train to Florence (World Wide Web Conf), trains to the coast and a ferry to Croatia (tourism, chillin'), buses and trains through Croatia to Slovenia (Extended Semantic Web Conf). Then one flight back to Edinburgh.
Since then I dreamed of slow-moving ongoing travel with no date I had to be back by. Now I find myself with all the time in the world, no ties or dependents, and a remote job, and can finally live it.
It's a great way to discover new places, get a better grip on international geography, and have diverse experiences.
In short if you can swing it, finding alternative ways to travel without flying is the bomb. Learn how to sleep and/or work on buses, make some time, and give it a shot. Academics with flexible schedules and hours (by which I mean, you tend to work all the time and mostly it doesn't matter where from) are in a superb position. If you're in a position to fund (time-rich, schedule- and location-flexible) students to travel, persuade them to look at alternatives before jumping on a plane.
I always start investigating a new route with Rome2Rio. Sometimes finding connections can be daunting and time consuming, and I'm also happy if anyone wants to ping me overland/sea travel questions I can try to help based on my experiences so far.
Disclaimer! I know many people, academics or otherwise, are not in a position to devote days to getting from A to B! I know many people are not physically or mentally able to spend long durations on buses. I know sometimes flying is just the only option if you don't want to miss out altogether! Consider this post aimed at those who can, and just need a bit of a nudge to step out of their comfort zone.
JESUS airbnb freaks out every time I log in from a different country LIKE A COUNTRY WHERE I HAVE BOOKED ACCOMMODATION THROUGH AIRBNB put 2 and 2 together christ
One time it absolutely refused to send me a confirmation code by any other means than SMS to a number which I couldn't get reception on where I was and I had to jump through hours of support hoops when trying to deal with a time-sensitive host-contacting issue which was definitely not in any way stressful. At least now it seems to be consistently offering me the email confirmation option.
although right now I just get a 500 every time I try to log in did i mention i hate computers
I went to Tallinn City library this afternoon. It's small, but a nice place, good fancy ceilings, some nice rooms with nice chairs and old books, the wifi is good, lots of power sockets, very quiet. I hung out with my laptop for about an hour and a half. Just before 5.30pm I realised I had thought the library closes at 5, but hey I guess not. A short while later I packed up my stuff and went downstairs.
The front door was locked. All the lights were off. Not a soul was in sight.
I went back upstairs to ask the other person sitting on her laptop there if she this was normal and she knew another way out. She did not. We wandered around and tried a few doors.
Haha. We were locked in the library. It didn't open again until Monday.
We proceeded to call and email every contact number on the library webpage we could find. She also called the 24h Tallinn city general helpline, and they promised to call back. She called her mother, who called someone she knew who worked at a different library, who also promised to call back.
Meanwhile we found a window that was big enough to climb through and not too far off the ground to jump out if necessary. We decided this or calling the police would be an absolute last resort.
We made an effort to get through to the pub next door, in case they either happened to have a spare key or the library employees had gone there after work.. but no answer.
M and I introduced ourselves, and bonded over veganism (<3!) and travel and chocolate and the small art display in the library we would not have bothered to look at if we weren't trapped there.
M's family members turned up outside the window, and went to see if anyone was in the pub who could help.
The city helpline called back and said the director had been contacted and was on her way, but lived 30 minutes away.
She eventually showed up, and turned out to be a distant relative of M, and the daughter of the person M's mother had called earlier! It's a small country. She was accompanied by a surly security guard who took photos of our IDs. Apparently we'd set of a silent alarm when we opened the window earlier and security were already quietly surrounding the building.
Then they let us out and I had dinner with M and her family at a nearby veg*n buffet.
Just another day..
(Also this morning I went on a walking tour and found a SPECTACULAR vegan chocolate shop, really enjoying Tallinn so far.)
The closest beach to where I'm staying is a small one called Russalka beach. A little further around the coast is Maarjamäe Park, with a big obelisk, some Soviet-looking concrete statues, and lots of open space. This leads to hilly and wild Paekalda. On the way back towards town is Kadriorg, with Kadrioru Park containing a vast palace estate with fancy buildings hundreds of years old, and beautiful grounds; also home to various museums.
To the ferry ports, and around the coast to Linnahall - an enormous Soviet concrete structure. The interior is closed but the exterior is available for clambering all over. There are great views out to the ocean, and little scrappy beaches nearby. It's beautifully dystopian.
The 'culture kilometer' starts here, but I diverged from the path to follow the cost, and saw the abandoned Patarei sea-fortress prison which is also pretty dystopian.
The culture kilometer ends in the Kalamaja district which people keep saying is the hipster area. It's behind the train station, and full of nice wooden houses and cute bars, artisanal stuff and street food.
My default state is absolutely sleeping late, not going outside, not interacting with people, staying in my pyjamas all day, not showering and eating only toast. I work every day to operate outside of this.
Staying in hostels and shared accommodation can actually be really good for me, because I usually have to get dressed and interact with people on some level. Staying in places with shitty internet mean I have to go find a library or a cafe to work from. Staying in places for a short length of time means I have to go out every day if I want to see 'everything' or at least get a good sense of the place.
Of course constantly moving around brings its own set of exhaustion and other problems, which is why I inject solo accommodation for longer periods into my travel schedule.
I love living on my own, but I have to ramp up effort to not spiral into a sad smelly hole. Some days are easier than others. And it's such a vicious circle. Some days I'm on the sofa absolutely unable to function and wondering what's even the point and I am getting better at realising OH I probably just need to fucking go outside for an hour and I'll feel better. And then actually making myself do it.
Last couple of days I've been working on brain-melting server-y stuff and ending the day in a total haze, but managed to go out around 7pm, picked a direction to walk, and discovered new beautiful areas of Tallinn and felt infinitely better, which is much better than curling up with Netflix for the whole night.
Relatedly, now I have a job with regular video calls I tend to get mostly dressed for those. Though recenty I bought a nice loose jumper which I can put over my pyjamas and it makes me look semi respectable from a distance. So uh, work in progress. Sorry colleagues. Doesn't help with the showering thing. When I started this job I was quite terrified of how much facetime I would be having because from experience there are days when I just can't but actually I'm getting used to it and it's quite nice to have 15-30 minutes each morning of seeing friendly faces. Even if I wake up in a nope mood and don't think I want to dial in, I tend to feel better afterwards.
This is vastly better than in-person office job which involve being around people all day and render me unable to even go out to buy groceries at the weekend. As ever, it's a balance I suppose. And trying to be in tune with my moods; to figure out the difference between what my brain and body are telling me they want on the surface, versus what would actually help me to feel better.
My favourite yoga teacher needs some help getting to Thailand for her dream job this winter: GoFundMe. It would be a shame for a silly thing like the cost of transit from Bosnia to Thailand to be all that gets in the way.
Aida taught me yoga in Sarajevo last year, and took me on some nice retreats as well. She's a fantastic teacher, and I find the pace of her classes - whether vinyasa or yin - perfect. I've also learnt a lot from her about other topics, from Ayurveda to trauma release. Aida has the opportunity to teach in Thailand this winter (and getting out of Sarajevo in the winter is always a good idea) and she's taking her mischievous little daughter with her too. I hope they make it, they deserve every minute of sunshine :)
Who is going to MyData2018 in Helsinki at the end of the month?
It's horribly expensive for some reason, and I'm too lazy to volunteer, so I won't be at the conference itself but I'll be in town for a couple of days if anyone wants to hang out.
dudes your settle down / have a family joke is not funny and maybe you didn't realise because you haven't been bombarded your whole life with the idea that this should be your sole purpose for existing but seriously shut the fuck up
If at any point you feel like joking about settling down / having a family to someone you know expressly doesn't want to settle down / have a family then take a second and try just not.
An evening run through Kadrioru Park and a little beyond.
A walk to Stroomi beach for a swim in the sea. Then a long trek around the coast through Paljassaare wildlife conservation area which is absolutely beautiful and contains many tranquil spots for swimming and an amazing variety of flora and fauna.
Reading people arguing about decentralised social web stuff makes me 50-50 want to pick back up my own implementations and make them work, and leave computing forever to hide in a cave.
The compromise between these tensions tends to be go back to my day job / pick up a book / go to the beach / make a sandwich.
I walked around the coast to Pirita; a little over an hour. After the harbour is a ruined convent. Usually it's accessible, but there were restoration works or something when I went and it was closed. It looks pretty cool though.
I walked through the woods to the Botanical Gardens, which was further than I expected. I detoured through some nice modern cemeteries.
The Botanical Gardens are beautiful and serene, and well worth a visit. A combined ticket with the TV Tower (which is next door) is €15, or separately they're €5.50 and €13 respectively.
The TV Tower itself is also really worthwhile. It's super high with fantastic views for a start. (If you go on a day with poor visibility, you can get a stamp on your ticket which lets you come back for free any time! I didn't have this problem though.) It's a wonder of Soviet concrete glory, and was largely built by 'volunteers' (unpaid workers..?). Inside on the ground floor is a detailed exhibition of its history and construction. At the top in the main dome are changing exhibits. I saw futuristic clothes designs from a local fashion school, and an electronic interactive set of displays about Estonian digital innovation and current day e-infrastructure.
There's also a restaurant at the top, and an outdoor balcony.
On the way out after the gift shop is another exhibit about life in Estonia in Soviet times which was really well done and informative.
Then I walked a different route through woods and cemetery to Pirita beach. I stopped for food at Vigri, a vegan buffet with an amazing cake selection, which is in the large boat-shaped building at the harbour. Then I chilled on the beach with a book for a few hours, and swam in the sea, before walking back.
I admire the dedication of the workers who are refacing the building I'm staying in. A solid 8am to 8pm schedule of banging, drilling, scraping, and crashing around, often directly outside my window. I thought they'd at least take Saturdays off so I could sleep in though. Apparently not.
I met V and his couchsurfer M and we went to Telliskivi creative city. There was a flea market and music and foodtrucks and general festivities. We found vegan doughnuts. We showed M around the old town, and went up the tower of St Olaf's Church, the tallest building in Tallinn - it doesn't look like it, but none of the skyscrapers downtown are taller (you can tell from a distance). They're not allowed to be. Entry is €3 and it's a dizzying narrow climb.
We wandered around Linnahall and around the coast to Seaplane Harbour. For a change the boats were open for climbing in, and there was a stage with musicians. It was the Night of Prehistoric Lights, when every coast around the Baltic Sea and further afield are lit up with bonfires and celebrations. We watched the sun set, and sat by the fire for a while.
Hair update. Channeling Beth a bit. It's warmer tones than I was going for but apparently purple shampoo and time will make it grey-er. Or a second round of bleach.
Wandering around the coast, checking out cemeteries, Finnish National Museum during the 2 hours a week it's free, free walking tour, free accommodation and didn't buy tickets for the trams.. and still spent too much money.
Coming back to Tallinn after two days in Helsinki felt like returning home after a long voyage for some reason. So I stayed an extra night than planned, and went to Parnu in the morning. Enjoyed pizza on the Linnahall at sunset, and breakfast in the market from Toormoor.
Ferry to Helsinki; touristed in Helsinki; spent far too much money and didn't sleep enough. Those Fins sure know how to party. Hung out with bengo and the MyData2018 crowd.
A day in Parnu, south-west Estonia. Nice beach, some jolly good swamps, cute town center and one vegetarian cafe that I went to for dinner then breakfast (Piccadilly Wine and Chocolate). Then a bus out, Riga-bound.
One night on Cape Kolka (Latvia). One of the most beautiful places I have ever been. I stayed in one of the Saules Majas - Houses of the Sun - a barrel with a bed in it, electricity or heating or water, right on the beach. The mirrored glass window faces the sea, and you can see the sunrise and sunset from the same place. The Cape is a national park, and it was utterly tranquil.
I got up to watch the sun rise, and went for an early hike around the pine forests.
The plan was to hitchhike out as the public transport is sparse, which was immediately successful as my barrel-neighbours were driving the right way and took me with them to Ventspils.
There are a small number of veg*n places in Tallinn, and many places are vegan friendly. Loads of regular coffee shops and cafes clearly mark vegan options on their menu; varying quality though, if the reviews on happycow are anything to go by. Also many homemade ice cream shops have vegan flavours. Despite staying there for a few weeks I didn't actually try them all (I was having a budgetarily-challenged month, for a start). Food in Tallinn is fairly cheap overall, but the vegan places are a bit pricier, and cafes and coffeeshops in the old town certainly are. I mostly cooked for myself.
Groceries
Biomarket seemed like a good candidate for vegan supplies, but actually there was very little specialist stuff there, and it was pretty expensive. They have bulk grains and organic food. But many of the same things can be found for much cheaper in regular supermarkets.
Plant milks are common in all supermarkets, but not particularly cheap. Rimi is the cheapest for everything. You'd be hard pressed to find a litre for less than €2, but you might if you shop around for special offers.
The food shop in the basement of Solaris has a good selection of not-meats and not-cheeses, and other vegan goodies. They're in their own dedicated display near the front of the store. Everything else here is more expensive than Rimi though.
Vegan mayo in a squashy packet can be found in Solaris for 79c and Rimi for 65c. This is the cheapest vegan mayo I've ever seen. The sachet is not as big as a jar but one lasted me for 3 weeks.
Tofu seems to be expensive everywhere. I never found it, but apparently if you look hard enough it's cheap in Rimi.
Veg Machine
Behind Balti Jaam train station, through the market and into the main hall on the left. It's a small stand with a few seats and healthy all-vegan junk food. The pulled sweet potato burger looks fantastic. But for €4 I had a cheesy tofu melt sandwich.
Toormoor
Also in Balti Jaam, right behind the fruit market in the entrance, this is a place specialising in raw food. They have a few seats downstairs and on the roof (which is still under the cover of the market building). I had a breakfast here, and tried a creamy fruit coconut milk porridge, and a raw wrap with sprouts and veggies and really good sauce. The coffee was nice too. Two dishes and two coffees came to a reasonable €12.60.
Vegan Inspiratioon
A nice restaurant in the old town with a variety of dishes, all vegan, and many raw options. Somewhere to go for a casual lunch or a fancy evening meal equally. I tried a burger with black bread and an incredible stack of fillings. Including tofu 'egg' salad, and a great coleslaw on the side.
There was a dessert on the menu called 'Estonian spotted cake' so I ordered it. Turned out to be a chocolatey block with fruit, biscuit chunks and candies throughout. Pretty rad.
Vigri
Pirita is just north of Tallinn around the coast, and with the botanical gardens, TV tower, gorgeous stretches of beach and peaceful forests, it's a great place to go fro a day out. Stopping at Vigri is the icing on the cake.
Seriously. The cakes at that place.
I showed up ravenous, having been walking for hours and badly mistimed my meals. I restrained myself bravely on the buffet - which was a selection of hearty vegetable based dishes (one with tofu). Bread is unlimited for free outside of the pay-by-weight buffet.
Then I induced a food coma with a giant sticky caramel-y nutty cinnamon bun. And rolled to the beach to sleep it off.
Also in the vicinity were a branch of New York Pizza (with vegan cheese) and a beach foodstand with a 'vegan' menu on the side!
Vegan Italy
An Italian restaurant near Ulemiste, south of the old town. At lunch there's a buffet, as well as a la carte. They make their own vegan salami on premises, as well as bread. The buffet had a selection of pasta dishes, lasagnas, vegetables and salads; all good, I tried a bit of everything. It's €9 for all you can eat, and includes a portion of the dessert of the day. It was good food, and very friendly stratosphere. The dessert when I went was plums in white wine sauce.
Green Bakery
This small cafe has narrow opening hours and isn't central, so I dropped by when I was in the neighbourhood hoping for cake or pastries. Despite the name, they had none. Maybe I was just late. It was pretty busy, and serving a buffet. I didn't get anything, with lunch scheduled at Vegan Italy nearby.
Karu Talu
An all vegan chocolate shop in the dead center of old town. Abso-fucking-lutely fantastic. Most chunks of chocolate are €2 and they're all dark and rich, fresh handmade. A cascade of different flavours. I tried mint, cherry, almond, snickers, chilli, sugar-free peanut and chocolate-covered kama.
Kama is a local cereal, and for coating in chocolate it was puffed into crispy balls. The piece they gave me was as big as my head, and so easy to eat too much of.
Adjoined with the main chocolate shop is a section which also supplies teas, coffees, ice creams and savoury and sweet pastries at very low prices. There's not really any seating though.
Tea and Coffee Shop
A small cafe in the old town. They mostly wholesale loose leaf tea and coffee beans (a massive selection of both) and related equipment. There are a few tables though, plus power and wifi. They offer every plant milk you can think of for drinks, and have several homemade vegan cakes. I had a spectacular banana bread and spent a quiet afternoon there.
Bliss
After getting locked in Tallinn City library for a few hours, I went to Bliss. The buffet is extensive, all vegetarian (and well labelled) and pay-by-weight. It's in the Solaris mall, and you have to go through a book shop to get there - look for arrows on the floor. Loads of seats. Desserts and smoothies too. The food was good, and a big variety.
Sushi Plaza
A regular sushi place, but with a large vegan menu and most of the desserts are vegan too. The sushi is excellent and a good price. Nice atmosphere, too.
New York Pizza
A regular pizza place with vegan cheese and loads of good veggie toppings. It's above average price, but hits the spot. There are several branches around Tallinn, including one in Pirita right by the beach.
NOP
Neighbourhood Organic Place was around the corner from where I was staying. It sells groceries, as well as meals and bread. I dropped by, but they had nothing I wanted, and the groceries were really expensive. I never got around to going back for a meal.
Pop-ups
On a day of wandering I happened upon a flea market type thing in Telliskivi. There were vegan food trucks of course, but I was already full from lunch at home with friends (whom I'd met earlier in the month at a vegan potluck picnic in the park..). Nonetheless, we forced some doughnuts upon ourselves..
Tartu
Pahupidi Kohvik
A very cute cafe with lots of space and a really nice menu. Good quality healthy food at great prices, and friendly service to boot. I ate courgette ravioli with cashew cheese and it was delicious. I was angling after churros but they were out, and no ice cream either.. the waiter strongly recommended to me the last of the daily cake, which was a truly spectacular salted caramel cheesecake and clearly fate decided I had to have it.
Ruunipizza
A pizza and pancake restaurant with several vegan options for both. I ate a pizza and a massive plate of fries. They have vegan pastries and cakes too, plus good smoothies. If I'm ever back in Tartu I'm definitely returning for a not-cheesey mushroom bean pancake!
Mahemarket
A cafe inside a bio/health food shop. There's a small pay by weight buffet and some cakes and salad. And you can take anything from the shop to accompany your meal. It's a nice space in a block of hip shops with a courtyard. When I was there, next door was a popup ice cream shop with vegan flavours. Not sure if that's a permanent fixture though.
Parnu
It's a small place. I found one vegetarian cafe and went there twice, for dinner then breakfast.
Piccadilly Wine and Chocolate
More than half of the menu is vegan, and really delicious. The Greek soup was hearty and filling, packed full of veggies accompanied by crunch black bread and only €4 (which after Tallinn felt great). They have a few vegan cakes, mostly raw cheesecake style. I tried chocolate and blackberry and approve.
For breakfast I had an unusual savoury porridge with vegetables, mushrooms and green salad. It was incredible actually.
Helsinki
I'm going to throw Helsinki in here because it intersected with my Estonia time, and was just a couple of day visit. Main point: it's expensive. Everything is expensive. Best bet is just.. don't eat here. In two days I spent all of my food budget for Lithuania. Well, it felt like that. There are plenty of vegan places, and many of them are co-ops. There were two I tried to go to which mysteriously weren't open during the signposted hours. Frustrating, but.. there are plenty of alternatives.
Soi Soi
Finest vegetarian junk food; most items are vegan but there is some cheese flying around. I enjoyed a seitan burger with vegan cheese, deep fried cauliflower, and sampled sweet potato fries. €10.50 for the burger and side. Very satisfying.
Roots
A healthy cafe that's part of a yoga studio; good food, but on the pricier side (relatively!). A burger packed with root vegetables, amazing melty vegan cheese and cracking salad, plus a flat white set me back €17.
There's lots of space, it's a nice place.
Jänö
A junk food stand very handily right by the Finnish National Museum and open until midnight most days. I believe it doesn't operate in the winter. They offer various not-meats on a bed of fries, ice cream, candies and fancy juices. Cheap (relatively) and filling; I had not meatballs and sampled soya sausage. They come with several blobs of different sauces.
Kippo
An all vegan outlet on the 3rd floor of the Forum mall. Obviously a mall environment, but nice food. A sandwich and a smoothie combo will be around €14. They make their own cashew cheese and there's a choice between that and mozzarella (which my educated tastebuds suggest is Violife).
So I hitchhiked from Kolka to Ventspils, and my drivers dropped me off in town. I went to the library, and wandered around a bit. Ventspils is okay, but didn't really vibe, and there are no hostels or other good places to stay. So I made a plan to get out, and move on to Liepaja.
Then I immediately bumped into my original drivers again, who had stopped for a break and were just about to continue around the coast. So they took me to Liepaja. Easy mode.
Two nights in Liepaja, which is bigger than Ventspils and has more of a backpacker scene. The beach is unfathomably soft and white. There's also a giant lake (Lake Liepaja) which is surrounded by nature reserve and has a beautiful spit leading a way out into it.
Then I took a bus to Klaipeda. Note - the international Ecolines bus does not leave from the main bus station, which I found out after walking all the way across town to it. I had to taxi back to a square in the old town (10 mins from my hostel) to make it on time.
I was in Balkan taxi mode I guess, and all set to fight for this to not be more than 5eur.. but there was actually a meter running, and after the driver had quoted me 5 or 6 before we left, it came to 4, and he wouldn't take a tip. I'm so used to taxi drivers trying to rip me off, this was a delightful surprise.
Then the bus driver was napping, and we left 20 minutes late. Somehow still arrived to Klaipeda on time though.
I've been pretty meh and lethargic and unfocussed for a few weeks, but apparently what I needed was a hectic week of barely-planned travel, hostel-hopping and a bus ride a day, and the clouds have lifted. I'm in hostels for the rest of this month, so maybe I'll get some shit done.
I cycled further in one go today than I ever have in my life before (40 miles). Yet I'm a bit disappointed I didn't go further. For some reason I thought I'd be able to make the return journey too. Also everything hurts. Different things from after a too-long hike. Mostly my butt.
Love the idle threats of hostels on booking.com that they'll somehow charge you the full amount if you don't show up. Yet they don't ask for your credit card to book, and explicitly only accept cash on-site. Suuuure you wired that system up. Sure you did.
Mashing the 'resend to RunKeeper' button and praying to the quantified self gods to fucking sync my last week+ of activities already. Grumble.
It's all very well GPS tracking my life, but if I can't get it off my phone it never really happened, did it?!
(Might be in the market for a new android (4.4 or lower) GPS tracker.. any recommendations? Doesn't have to do anything except draw a map, and be exportable to an open format. Auto-posting to twitter is a bonus. Fantastic API would be great too, for when I get around to owning this stuff myself. Oh and also NOT CRASH all the time like RunKeeper, eh.)
Am I suddenly the oldest person in a dorm at hostels? People keep asking my permission to do things. Can I open the window? Turn off the light? Okay if I take a shower? And not even like I'm the only other person in the room. But for some reason I'm in charge..?
Remember that time I walked to the (Kaliningrad) Russian border from Poland? I wanted to do that again, from the Lithuanian side. This is a slightly longer ordeal, requiring better transportation than feet. Long story short, I didn't actually make it to the border, but I did see it from the top of a sand dune. I got pretty close though. Anyway, I'm sure that border is less exciting than the Polish one, because you can actually cross it (in a car, not on foot).
The Curonian Spit is not connected to Klaipeda, but the ferry takes 5 minutes. They run every hour, from 0700 out, up to 2215 returning. It costs 1 EUR return for foot passengers, or passengers with a bike, and you can buy tickets from the machines at the port in Klaipeda old town. I rented a bike from my hostel for 24 hours for 5 EUR (we managed to lower the seat all the way so I could just about use it). Most bike rental places in town are 10-12 EUR.
The spit is well furnished with cycle paths, in various states of decay, but mostly well-maintained. This route is pretty popular. The northern most coast is an enormous long sandy beach. Very glorious. It's backed by epic dunes, and you can only access it at designated points from cycle paths running down the middle, because tramping around on the dunes is a no-no. Large portions of the spit are also do-not-enter nature reserves.
After I got off the ferry in Smiltyne, first I went right/east (not the direction of Kaliningrad) to check out the other end of the spit for completeness. There's a sea museum, a dolphinarium (ugh) and the start of the beautiful beach. I pushed my bike along the beach for a while, which wasn't so bad on the wet sand, until I could join one of the main cycle paths, peeking out between the dunes. It was easy sailing for a while; the path was in good repair, and either flat or any ups were well compensated with excellent downs. It weaves through the forest, with views of dunes on the right and pine trees on the left, or sometimes trees on both sides.
It took me two hours from joining the path to get to Judokrante, the next village. Here I stopped for lunch at Pamario Takas, a super nice place with loads of outdoor seating and.. lots of vegan options! The food was homemade and delicious; I ate lentil patties, coffee, panna cotta, and a wheatgrass shot for a boost, which all came to about 14 EUR. But I hadn't had breakfast. Judokrante has a nice seafront, with lots of restaurants and sand sculptures.
My lunch break was 45 minutes. My butt was already aching a bit, and it was nice to relax, but I tried to resist temptation to linger too long. I followed the coast through Judokrante - featuring some amazing sand scupltures - and rejoined the main cycle path. The next leg was long and same-y, through the woods. I occasionally detoured to check out a side road to a beach or a cape or a birdwatching tower. Mostly when I needed to hop off the bike for a bit. Sometimes I tied the bike to something and took a little walk through sand or a non-bike-friendly track. Walking was becoming a relief.
Sometimes the bike path got pretty sketchy, with holes and sand. Sometimes it arched over dunes, making hills I couldn't quite summit. The freewheeling down was fantastic though. There were quite a few people, but not so many that I didn't have long stretches with nobody in sight behind or in front of me.
The next villages around the coast are Pervalka and Preila. Little bits of scenic ports, a few restaurants and signs to things of interest I did not stop to check out.
Though they are small, there's plenty going on in all of the villages. Lots of people - mostly Germans and Lithuanians - come here for holidays, so there are tons of guesthouses and plenty of restaurants. There are also a disproportionate number of museums, galleries, open air art and sculptures, and other historical artefacts. Also many viewpoints (marked on openstreetmap at least), and natural features with mythological significance. I skipped by most of these, keen to get to the border, and still at this point thinking I could see them on the way back.
The final (agonising) stretch between Preila and Nida is a wide, smooth concrete road. It looks like it's designed for cars, but I think it was just the cycle path. I limped into Nida (as much as one does so on wheels), followed the coast around and saw the port. I found the bus stop, and confirmed the times. It was 1630 when I arrived, and the next bus was at 1800 (and one after that, at 2000). It's 4 EUR back to Smiltyne, and an extra 5 to take a bike. This seems like a horrible ripoff, but what can you do.
I parked my bike at the supermarket, and went for an amble to the 'Death Valley' sand dunes. This is just one of many exciting things to see in Nida, which is the biggest town on the spit. I considered walking all the way to the Kaliningrad border anyway, but that would have taken an hour and a half. There was no way my butt was getting back on the bike, and if I somehow missed the last bus I was pretty screwed. So I opted for seeing the Russian bit of the spit from the top of the dune instead. Close enough.
The bus was waiting half an hour early when I got back to town. Two other people had just had the driver load their bikes into the compartment on the back. I felt like he could have awkwardly stacked a third one in there, but he didn't. Nope, you can't come. I drifted a few meters away, fumbled with my phone, looked presumably scared and confused. I'd already considered my options if the 1800 bus wouldn't take my bike, and I didn't like any of them so I hadn't settled on a backup plan. Whatever my expression was doing made the driver sufficiently sympathetic that he came over and led me around the bus and opened the side luggage compartment. My bike went in there sideways. I offered him my eternal gratitude (and an extra 5 EUR) and went to wait in the bus.
The ride all the way back to Smiltyne is an hour exactly. The bus only stops in the villages, and won't be flagged down on the road. I got to see a slightly different bit of the spit for most of the stretch, as the cycle path I used on the way out tended to swap spit-sides whenever the road did, to the opposite one.
I had three ferries remaining to me by the time I got there, and considered sticking around in Smiltyne a bit; sitting in a coffee shop (there's one with a hammock in the yard) or on the beach for a while. It was getting grey and cool, and I was just exhausted and achey though, so I took the 1915 ferry right away.
I pushed the bike back to the hostel.
Overall it was a great outing, but I definitely overestimated my cycling abilities. I'm entirely convinced my sister would have managed to get there and back, and included a nice lunch, swim in the sea, and most of the museums and points of interest, with no problem. I guess I should practice.
When I was deciding how to divide up my month in Lithuania, I looked at the map, zoomed in on the cities, checked out the bus routes, and a voice inside me said "spend two weeks in Kaunas." It's the second biggest city in Lithuania (still not big), not by the sea, and fairly unremarkable apart from having the longest pedestrian street in Eastern Europe going through the middle. The voice was so convincing, I booked two weeks in an non-refundable hostel as far as two months in advance.
Anyway, the voice was right, this place is super nice. Maybe I was predisposed to love it, but my first impression on the afternoon I arrived was at least as powerful as my immediate love for Bratislava.
Food options are good, stuff is cheap, there's a really nice river and a castle, a new town and an old town, some lakes not too far away; I've made myself at home in a co-working space, and people seem friendly.
Last summer I listened endlessly to Sia, and now the sound of her voice POWERFULLY invokes sunny Sarajevo; the feeling of hanging out by myself in my little flat, making flatbreads and waiting 4 hours for beans to cook in my half-assed kitchen, and feeling very very sad about something. If I'm feeling even a tiny bit fragile, just a couple of seconds of hearing her can make me burst into tears on the spot, from a combination of how I was feeling last summer, and a touch of Sarajevo-homesickness. Doesn't even have to be a song I know, just her voice. Which is slightly problematic, as she's still played in public spaces a lot. And also because I just want to listen to her when I need something bouncy and sometimes I can't.
Walk to the Kaunas Botanical Gardens. Peaceful, as expected. About an hour and a half walk from the city center. I sat in a greenhouse and read for a while. Two weddings happened while I was there.
Stopped by Akropolis Mall on the way back, which is entirely ridiculous and bigger on the inside. Dinner at MasalaCiti, delicious kofta.
A walk to the Vytauto old Soviet theme park (still brightly coloured and functioning, but much smaller than expected, and then around Oak Grove. Stopped at a random cafe, Kregzdute, for lunch because my hostel-friend was hungry, and was surprised by several vegan options on the menu; obviously I had to try something to show demand.
We continued on for a long long walk along the beautiful riversides that snake around and through the city, until we got back to old town.
Workplace design for small people: make sure when the chair is at its highest, the arms don't align perfectly with the desk preventing it from sliding all the way under.
Also.. make the highest height of the chair higher. I am so smol.
A couple of years ago I met people while travelling with lifestyles I envied. Now I'm the person with the lifestyle other travellers envy. Feels good.
Specifically the fact that I figured out what I was envious of, and made it happen for myself. Not the being subject of envy part.
Not bragging, except I am, because I LOVE living like this and am PROUD of myself for just doing what I felt like even though it was easy and natural to do so.
Now 'scuse me while I go stand in a ten person line for the single hostel toilet for the fifth day in a row.
A few days of food.. amazing Indian-Thai fusion and Moksha; a healthy burger at Zalia Pupa and delicious homecooked veganised Lithuanian classics at Arbatine.
Today I walked to the IX Fort (via the VIII Fort). A historical defense structure, one of many around Kaunas several hundred years old. It was used for horrific things by the Nazis and the Soviets in the 1930s to 1950s, and served as a prison before that too. Today it houses two museums, and on the grounds is a striking Holocaust memorial. One museum tells the stories both of those who survived their experiences in the Fort, and those who did not, as well as the wider context of WWII and the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. The other details the history and construction of the Fort, and the other things it has been used for over the centuries. There's also artwork.
It was a very hot day. I walked back along the river, and stopped for some bargain junk food on the way.
I went to the Kaunas City Hall Museum, which is a big church-y looking building in the central old town square. It didn't look like much on the inside, just some furniture and grandeur, and no displays so I immediately started to regret paying €2.50 to go inside. But then! A hilariously nervous but smiling and enthusiastic dorky man appeared to talk me through everything I was seeing. He opened secret doors that looked like the wall and lead to spiral staircases to other rooms or the balcony up the tower. He emphasised that all the furniture is old and authentic, and described all the things politicians did in all the rooms. I think he thought I was much more excited about the history than I was, because I was so entertained by his mannerisms. Then he pointed me to a basement / former prison; I went down and he didn't follow. This one was full of signs, more like a normal museum. Lots of archeology and history stuff too. So in the end, very cool. Still only took about 15 minutes in total though.
Wandering through the old town I stuck my head into every other church I passed.
Then I went to the Castle Museum, which was also €2.50 and hecka disappointing. It was really small, I guess. In the top of the tower is a very nice photo exhibition of doors that look like knight helmets and people holding cut-outs of them up to their faces. But apart from that, I wouldn't bother.. just walk around the outside of the castle.
Then I went to the massive white church which looms over all of Kaunas from the hillside. The Church of the Resurrection was, I believe, started in the couple of decades of independence Lithuania had between the World Wars, but not finished, and only cleaned up and purposed as a church in the early 90s. It's € 1.20 to climb the stars up the tower to the massive roof terrace, which is worth it. Probably the best views of the city from here. I stuck around and read for an hour or so.
It was hot, so I wrapped up my day by heading to the island park and reading by the river until the sun set.
I filled up November with travel and Vipassana, so I'm psyching myself up to do Nanowrimo in October. I'll track my daily word count as usual of course, and make a script to post the right number each day to the Nanowrimo.org API during November.
I went to the National Art Museum today, which is named after and mostly about and full of the works of Čiurlionis. Turns out it was also his 143rd birthday today, so the audio guides for his section were free (as opposed to €4). I'm not super into art museums/galleries, but I was in the mood today, and I've never done with an audioguide before. So that was interesting. I had to take it a lot slower than usual, hearing some (often long and rambling) history and context to the paintings, and also having details pointed out to me that I might not have noticed by myself, I really appreciated the art.
Plus Čiurlionis paints super rad alien fantasy landscapes, so that was cool.
On this day I went to the Vytautas the Great War Museum, where Vytautas is great, not war. Lithuania has been involved a lot of wars, and they are all very well documented here. It also contains the genuine wreckage of the record-breaking but ultimately unsuccessful plane Lituanica (the only time a member of staff spoke to me during the visit was to express to me that the wreckage is the original, in German eventually after trying three languages I didn't understand). The whole museum was still smaller than I expected though, and I was disappointed the tower is closed. It's a big, grand building. Probably worth the €2.
Then I went to the National Art Museum around the corner. This is way bigger than expected. I'm not really into art galleries, but this had a lot of interesting cultural, historical stuff in as well as exhibits. The main artist is Čiurlionis who paints awesome abstract alien landscapes. I got a free audio guide because it was his birthday. This one is €4 but turned out to be pretty great.
The Pope was in Kaunas today. So were 100,000 people to see him. I went by the castle park to take some photos of the crowds, saw the Pope on the big screen in the old town square and got a fleeting glimpse of the popemobile. Lunch in the ever fantastic Arbatine.
Temperature dropped over 10 degrees Celcius over the weekend and it's grey and drizzly buuuuut it's my last day in Kaunas and I don't have to work so I guess I should go for a long hike anyway.
Holy Donut has this thing called a 'freak shake', one of which is vegan. It looks fantastic in the picture and description so finally I managed to give it a try. The only thing 'freak' about it though is how many things are wrong with it. Get it together people.
Issue 1: They were out of coconut cream. No dairy cream is not okay. So okay, I go without. I resent that it's still more expensive than the non-vegan ones though.
Issue 2: The chocolate crumbs were glued to the inside of the glass, with chocolate. How am I supposed to eat this? I object to such delicious chocolatey goodness being used solely for decoration. I chipped them off with my spoon and made a mess everywhere.
Issue 3: Chocolate may look good swirled around the outside of the glass, but it set rock solid in the cold soy milk. I made a lot of noise and not much progress chipping away at it with my spoon. I. Want. To. Eat. The. Chocolate.
Issue 4: The menu advertises 'lots of bananas'. There was only half a banana involved in the whole affair. How can I count this as a portion of fruit now?
I spent a long time eating this milkshake and eventually got most of the chocolate out. It was a loud and messy process, and people definitely looked at me funny.
In conclusion: I do not recommend the Holy Donut 'freak shake'. Also it was €7 which is EXCESSIVE. I had such high hopes.
A walk. I found a library, and the 6th Fort, and parts of Kaunas technical university campus.
I was bound for Kaunas Lagoon Regional Park. A giant reservoir some two hour walk from the city center surrounded by trees, trails, beaches and preserved areas. I angled my approach to arrive at yet another a historical fort by the water. Some of the trails on maps.me are not so functional in real life. I ended up following a railway track a little way, before coming upon construction work carving out a new highway. Recent rain meant the whole place was extremely muddy. I scuttled along grassy embankments as best I could and also got stuck in and covered with mud on a number of occasions, whilst passing digger drivers watched me with amusement. I found the fort, but not before getting lost in a bit of swamp, and climbed damp and rickety steps to get up and down the mound that remained.
I stopped for lunch on a small bit of beach, just in time for the skies to open and drop everything they had. I waited it out under the roots of a tree protruding from the side of a cliff. Watching and listening to giant raindrops spreading in waves across the vast surface of the water.
I wanted to track south, to reach the grounds of the Pazaisliui monastery, but to reach a trail I'd have to go back the way I came, through the muddy construction site. I didn't fancy that, especially not after a further downpour, so I decided to try following the coast around. This involved occasional undergrowth scrabbling or wet feet as the beach gave way to foliage but by and large worked out.
I found the monastery (which is closed to visitors on Mondays) and by then the sun was well and truly out. It's a great domed building, set in grounds of well kept parkland that anyone can use.
I headed back to town along the river, and then through Basanavicious park.
Lazy last day in Kaunas. Checked out the library on Laisves Ave and wished I'd had time to spend there. Discovered I'd overbooked one night at Monk's Bunk but they gracefully gave me a refund. Food at Ridikas on the train platform, the train to Vilnius..
There's a giant rave at the club under my hostel tonight. The options the hostel offers to help people cope with this are free earplugs, or free entry to the rave.
Since earplugs don't fit in my unnaturally tiny earholes, I guess I'm going to the rave.
I found a high place where I could stand and watch the crowds bobbing around for a while. I enjoyed the invisible feeling I also like in crowded shopping malls. Pushing through the crowds to find an open space was scary, and I was always taken aback when I made physical contact with someone else and had to remind myself that is just life in a crowd. Once I had a bit more space it was okay though. The music was sometimes interesting, but mostly repetitive beats too loud to hear. There wasn't anything.. artistic about it. It's sort of weird people come here on purpose (and stand in line for hours and pay money to do so). I guess drinking makes a difference I will never fully comprehend. As ever, it was nice to watch people dance, though most people weren't so much dancing as vaguely pulsating with the music.
I was relaxed and completely alone and free and still had no urge to move with the music. I closed my eyes and tried to find that place, but it isn't there.
If I did this sort of thing often I would definitely find a way to make my hair glow under ultraviolet.
I walked through town, along the river, the long way to Vilnius TV Tower. There are lots of steep climbs through forest and nice views on the TV Tower side.
The TV Tower itself is kind of disappointing given the high price (€9). There's no separate observation deck, only the restaurant, so you have to kind of hang around the windows in between the tables. There's also not much of an exhibition. A few photos and notes about when it was attacked by the Soviets, and in the grounds some cool old satellite dishes. But compared to Tallinn, not even close. Obviously the view is good. Though no good angles to take photos from, and not much annotation about what you're seeing.
The river and park surroundings are nicer. I got a bit lost in the woods on the return and scrambled down a hillside that probably shouldn't have been scrambled down, to get back to the river. Then I crossed over to Vingio Park and walked through to the Botanical Gardens. The park is more civilised than the other side of the river, but still broadly woods. There's a stadium and some other human things there too though.
Back into town to end the day with pizza at Pizza di Ascari.
I passed by chance through the Botanical Gardens in Vilnius today, and out of the corner of my eye I saw some beautiful puffy looking flowers and steered over to take a look. They were dahlias! This is significant because my MC for premature nanowrimo is called Dahlia. Also dahlias are beautiful. Also October is soon.
So I couldn't blag a student ticket for the Trakai Island Castle museum, but two different bus drivers by default sold me a child ticket on the way there and back today.
(I don't normally try to pretend I'm a student, I just thought the full price was a bit steep on this occasion.)
Day trip to Trakai, Lithuania's number one domestic tourist destination. The town is squeezed between two large lakes, and features castles on islands, and an absolute butt-ton of interesting anthropological history.
The bus from Vilnius is €1.80 and takes about 30 minutes. They go pretty regularly so you don't need to plan much, just show up at the bus station. The bus station in Trakai is out of town, but Trakai ain't big, so you can walk to the other end in 30 minutes or so if you go directly.
I ambled around a bit and stopped for lunch on the lakeside, eventually making it to the big Island Castle. The entry is €8 which I thought was steep so I tried to wrangle a half price student ticket. No such luck. The museum is quite extensive, which detailed history of the area from the 1200s or so. There are also collections of artefacts, old and modern, and lots of information about the dereliction and restoration of the castle itself. Disappointingly access to the higher towers of the castle doesn't seem to be available. It was all very full of tourists. I spent a good hour and a half here though.
Then I ambled back through town, dropping into one of the big famous churches which was very ostentatious. I found the Karaim museum (€2 or €1 if you have an Island Castle ticket), which is tiny but suuuper interesting about this very small minority people, a few hundred of whom Vytautas the Great 'brought' over from Crimea in the 1400s and then.. built a town for. Having trouble figuring out exactly why or what happened here, even wikipedia isn't saying much. I guess records from then are sparse. There aren't many of these people left in Europe now - not that there were many to begin with - especially since Soviet stuff and Nazi stuff. Those who are are pretty well concentrated in Trakai, with others in Vilnius and Warsaw.
I went to the Trakai History Museum (€3) which is somewhat in the Peninsula Castle grounds, but is disappointingly tiny and doesn't contain anything castle-y. At some point a monastery was built there, and the museum is mostly if not entirely about Dominican monks, and has lots of Jesus-art.
The sun came back out so I took a €5 boat ride around the wee islands. I learnt stuff from the short audio commentary; this was definitely better value than the History museum.
Then I followed the coast back around to the bus station. On the way I detoured to check out some abandoned buildings I'd seen from the boat, which may or may not have been derelict Soviet concrete monstrosities. GPS trace for wandering around Trakai.
Back in Vilnius I made a beeline for Gyvas and had a cracking 'no-fish' tofu burger (wrapped in nori and deep fried!).
A walking tour of Vilnius, including the independent Republic of Uzupis, which has lots of art, its own parliament and a constitution printed in many different languages on the wall, and a general hippie vibe. Then I walked around the castle and nearby hills, including the Hill of Crosses, before lunch in Rosehip Cafe.
I detoured through some gardens on the way home, where I met an old lady (70, 75, she couldn't remember) who has lived her whole life in Vilnius and was delighted to have someone to talk to for a while (3 hours). She used to be an English teacher, and soon start repeating her stories and the questions she was asking me. She was a bit muddled too about whether her parents were dead, or if she still lived with them. She said she lived in her house in Vilnius her whole life, her parents had, and her grandparents before them. Her brother and sister had families and moved out, but still live in Vilnius. We had delightful chatter about dogs, the Pope, and Vilnius in general, on something of a loop. She invited me into her house when we got there, but I declined. She took out a hairpin instead of a key when it came time to lock the door. She wanted to walk me home too, and we went a bit further, but I managed to persuade her to go home before it got too dark and cold. She wrote down her name and address for me, and made me promise to call her without giving me a phone number. Her name is Dalia. You know, the same as Dahlia, the main character in my current nanowrimo novel who I named in January and isn't exactly a common name. Coincidence? Divine intervention?
Missing the little chart that appears in November on my nanowrimo profile, I made a NaNoWriMo progress page on my site. Obviously I got carried away and embellished it with all my past attempts, too.
A weekend in Riga with Claire, touristing and eating. We saw the old town, spent too much time in the market, and took a train for an evening stroll along the beach in Jurmala.
Food at Bhajan (wholefoods, custom cakes), Wok n Kurry (emergency Indian food, exceptionally helpful staff for gluten-free options) and Terepija (astonishing Sunday brunch buffet).
Where do I buy (with money!) DRM-free ebooks that I can put on my not-amazon-linked Kindle? (If it needs converting to a Kindle-friendly format that's fine). Somewhere with new releases and stuff. Specifically The Expanse Book 8 next March.
Update: Okay, looks like Calibre can remove most DRM which is awesome, just need to test it out before I throw money at a DRM version.
I picked up my e-residency from the Estonian Embassy this morning, and now I'm in a proper hipster cafe to work and eat vegan cake and drink flat white with quinoa milk surrounded by other cool lookin' laptop people, I'm at peak digital nomad today.
I just passed 30k words and I am ON TRACK for the FIRST TIME EVER.
Even the year I passed 50k by month end only happened because of a huge push in the last couple of days, rather than keeping a consistent pace throughout.
I've definitely had low days, and high ones to compensate, but nothing extreme. It just sort of feels much more doable this year. Not sure what's different. Well, lots of things are different; not sure which is the cause.
I'm writing a totally different genre to what I'm used to: Earth, presentish day (near future, perhaps), humans and parrots (and a dog); familiar setting, regular people, no aliens, no epic journeys. I was very worried about this actually, but things are flowing well, and I don't feel like I have written any absolute garbage purely for wordcount yet.
I've travelled, socialised and worked probably about the same amount as I did last year, though at different velocities. Not any less busy, particularly. I was free of all PhD concerns before last year's. Maybe my head is just in a better place. Maybe I'm becoming better at writing. Maybe October is better for writing than November. Who knows.
Coffee and cake and laptop time at Miit Coffee, which is a fantastic space, plenty of room to work, welcoming to hipsters and digital nomads, and serving fantastic vegan cakes and veg*n lunch offers, and pure coffee snobbery. They have quinoa milk for lattes too.
I went to a very small flea market in some reclaimed abandoned space, hosted by Free Riga. The market wasn't very exciting, but the buildings and area were cool.
The War Museum turns out to be free, and is very detailed and I spent a good two hours there. A great way to spend a rainy afternoon.
The sun came out in time for me to cross over the bridge by the Castle, then walk along the river and return over the one near the library. The former has a terrifying/hilarious tiny lift which you control by holding down a button. I didn't know what would happen if I let go, and was scared to find out.
Wandering and eating in the Old Town... food at Rama (cheap hearty veggie Hare Krishna buffet), Bahjan (high quality super delicious vegan food in a calm environment), Miit (hipster coffeeshop chic; cracking vegan burgers and pizzas in the evenings), and Fat Pumpkin (slightly overpriced upscale vegan dining).
Library tourism in the National Library of Latvia, which is full of interesting stuff and has great views. Probably better on a sunny day. Fantastic place to work, and not too busy either.
Then pizza at L'Acquerello, a cake break in Salada Terepija, and some cathedral interiors.
I bought a bunch of different types of mushrooms from the giant market, all new to me, in various states of decay. Some were bizarrely cheap, some were shockingly expensive. Obviously I had no idea what to expect, so maybe this was all perfectly normal.
When I got home I discovered one batch had some teeny tiny larvae crawling around on them. I rehomed them in the plumbing system, where I am sure they will thrive, and threw out any mushrooms they had thoroughly moved inside of, which was fortunately few.
The giant one is a bolete, and I think the smaller ones that look the same must be as well. I sorted out all of the small probably-boletes and halved them. I threw them in a pan and added naught but heat, and they soon turned into soup all by themselves. I'd rinsed them to try to get rid of some slime, and they just sucked the water right up. It was impossible to remove. See also: photo of me trying to try the big one out with a hair dryer (not successful).
I let them simmer for an hour or more, until they were thoroughly mush, then stuck them in the fridge when they were cool cos I had plans to eat out that night.
When I finally got around to consuming them as soup, they had reduced and gelled up a bit. I reheated them, and added a drizzle of soya sauce, almond milk and a handful of nutritional yeast. The soup was delicious. When I'd been preparing them, the texture and sounds started to really weird me out - I'm not usually squeamish. Fortunately they were just soft and melty in the soup and not weird at all.
The giant bolete, I sliced and fast-fried in vegetable oil. The internet advised me to cook it quick so the outside would go crispy but retain the moisture on the inside. It wasn't really like this; the result was preeetty slimy. It definitely resembled some kind of seafood, not that I know much about that. I could see it as a substitute though.
The more solid mushrooms, a mix of yellow, grey (beautiful grey) and a lonely red one, I lightly sauteed in oil with some salt and pepper. I wanted to keep them pretty unadorned, to taste the mushrooms properly. They made a delicious rich side to seitan sausages and potatoes.
Lunch and extended laptop time at delicious Bahjan Cafe. Great breakfast plate. Extreme cake.
Last minute walk to the TV Tower as the sun came out, which turns out to close at 1900! Lucky. Only €3.70 to enter, and a friendly tour guide escorts you up. It's going to be closed for renovation soon and will reopen in a few years as a totally new beast. For now, there's nothing up there except for the views.
As the weather is getting colder and wetter, I've started to miss having boots. Lace up or zip up mid-calf or almost knee-high waterproof boots. Boots that look nice over tights or jeans and are also practical. I can't have boots because I just don't have space to pack them, and I don't always want to wear them while on the road. If I'm on a bus, I want shoes I can kick off or slip back on quickly. It's very not practical to attach them to the outside of my backpack. And I would never wear them in hot weather and I'm really trying to keep the contents of my backpack to all-weather clothes. Sigh.
I'm wrapping up this year's National Novel Writing Month attempt after 30 days with 43,996 words. Shy of 50k, but a new second place.
I feel like I'm about half way through Birds and I'm going to try to keep up a pace of at least 750 words per day (thanks 750words.com) for days I can - the only real excuse not to being Vipassana meditation courses - until it's done.
In a way, doing nanowrimo in a different month has reminded me that I can write during months that aren't November. Usually, on the 1st of December I decide I'll take a break, recharge, it's been crazy.. but I'll get back to it. I'll write the ending, I'll edit. And I haven't, yet. This time should be different. For a start, I don't feel burnt out on the story. I haven't had a single day of writing words for the sake of words. It's all been to advance the plot or develop the characters, moving ever forwards. This month it didn't feel crazy.
This is a mean of 1,466 words per day.
Only on one day I wrote 0 words (the 26th).
Apart from that, the least I wrote in a day was 16 words (the 21st).
The most I wrote in a day was 3,410 (on the 10th).
Holy wow nobody told me how beautiful Warsaw is. Or that it'd be 17degC and blue skies in November.
This is day 1. I did a walking tour and saw the old town, walked along the river and through some parks. The University library (the green and pink leafy building) is incredible inside and out, and has a 1 hectare roof garden!
Of course I arrived on a national holiday, as is traditional with my visits to Poland, so most things were closed. I did mange to find food at Mango Vegan Street Food and a Hare Krisna place called Vege, which was senselessly cheap and filling.
Also visited the Warsaw Hackerspace; no pics there though.
Day 2: another sunny day, mostly cafe working. Featuring Loka Dela Krem pancakes and Kryzys, the anarchist cooperative vegan squat cafe. I stayed in Kryzys all afternoon, and in the evening a punk metal gig in support of antifacism happened around me. It was pretty great. I somehow had time for pizza (at Leonardo Verde) afterwards, too.
Day 3: a gloomy foggy day. I wandered around, found a warm museum in the citadel, ate pierogi, went to the cinema in the Palace of Arts and Culture (to see First Man) and then went for super fancy pants sushi at Youmiko.
I bought a day pass for the trams and zoomed about everywhere (15PLN). Which was nice because it was gloomy and drizzly again.
I went to the Warsaw Uprising Museum, which is free on Sundays, and spent a solid 3 hours there. It's super big and interesting with quite diverse installations and all very informative about Warsaw during and after the Second World War.
Then I trammed to Praga, over the other side of the river, with the intention of having lunch at Vegan Ramen Shop. There was a line down the street when I got there, and I was starving, so I figured I'd come back for dinner instead, and doubled back to a vegan falafel place (Zudi) I saw in the tunnel under the road/tram and had a really good seitan kebab.
Then I trammed to the Praga Museum, which I thought was also free on Sundays but turned out to be 15PLN. It was a bit weird, but some things were interesting. It's about local history and culture of the Praga area. I got really into the stories in the audio guide for a while, but then the battery ran out. There are some more modern exhibitions by students trying out traditional handicrafts, too. The whole museum wasn't huge though.
I wandered around Praga a bit before it got dark, then went back to Vegan Ramen Shop. There was still a line down the street. Unbelievable. This time I could wait though.
Totally worth it. I think the mad queues are for their limited time hallowe'en menu..
The clouds cleared up, so I went up to the top of the Palace of Arts and Culture. Visibility still wasn't super high, but I waited until sunset and everything is really shiny at night. I also wandered around a cemetery, and through the grounds of the Museum of Polish Jews. Then pizza.
A last beautiful day in Warsaw. I walked through some parks, saw some statues (including Chopin) and some squirrels and the Palace on the Water. Breakfast at Coco Bowls, lunch at Lokal, and a train to Kalisz.
One night and a morning in Kalisz, a bus to Turek, a taxi to Dhamma Pallava.. and some pics of the centre, before (warm and sunny) and after (frozen) the Vipassana retreat.
Winter is come, it's pissing freezing, and I'm still in Poland. It's not that things aren't going according to plan, more that my plan wasn't very good.
I put twitter in night mode and now I keep thinking I'm looking at Mastodon (via pinafore) and getting excited that someone I knew from twitter now has Mastodon and then being disappointed when I realise it's actually twitter.
A day of touristing and eating in Wroclaw. A walking tour of the gnomes, with Communist history, and then one of the bridges and islands after sunset. So much great vegan food.
Aaaaargh I'm tired. Seems like a good day to take a nightbus that arrives at 6am to a city with no places open until mid-moring on weekends. Right? Right.
Cafe working in Wroclaw. Some more gnomes, and finally the sun came out. Not long enough for me to get to the top of the Sky Tower, but I tried. Not the best investment, alas.
A weekend in Bratislava. Which, I forgot, is never a good time to go. Many things close on Saturdays and most things close on Sundays. However there was a christmas market, and its various extensions around the city. I got to visit Vipassana friends in their homemade container house on the hill.
There are lots of little quirks of English language I enjoy from people whose first language isn't English as I travel around Europe, but one of my all time favourites is "she just got a baby" instead of "she just had a baby".
It's funny because it carries connotations of picking a baby off a shelf, or finding one lying around.
It's profound because even though that's not usually what the person means, it is more inclusive of people with new babies who didn't personally give birth to them.
It also makes more standard grammatical sense if you think about it hard enough.
It would be hard to say goodbye to Sarajevo again, but I can't see it for the smog and I think the walk to the bus station is going to take another year off my life, along with those this place took last winter.
A few beautiful days in Sarajevo, followed by a few disgustingly smoggy days in Sarajevo.
I love Sarajevo, but only when I can see it.
Food at all the best places, which isn't a high bar to be fair: Karuzo twice, Falafel, krompirusa, Barhana, Blind Tiger, the burrito place in SCC, Vapiano.. And newcomers, La Vincenzo and finally Zdravo!
Rarely do I see a tweet so relevant to my interests. In my professional opinion, the Tesco Yeast Extract is the *perfect* middle ground between Vegemite and Marmite, I was very impressed. And it's cheaper. Vegemite is better than Marmite.
A couple of days of drizzly but bizarrely warm weather in Belgrade. Some good food. General floating around with laptop. Nothing touristy or interesting for you, dear reader. Sorry.
A few days of cafe working in Thessaloniki. The city is huge and sprawling; chaotic in a nice way. Winding uneven streets and cars and scooters to dodge. Maybe if it was hotter it would feel harder (more stressful?) to navigate, but the temperature is perfect. The seafront is concrete and the water is clear. Streets are pucked with excavated old shit; Roman amphitheatres, Byzantine towers. Churches are varied and extravagant and quite a few feet down from the pavements, roads and blocks of flats. This is a city of layers and layers.
Brunch at Butterflies & Hurricanes, a dessert cafe where chance would have it a fundraising vegan brunch was being held. It was packed and chaotic but I squeezed in. Most of the regular menu wasn't being served, but I ate some of the brunch buffet and then managed to get chocolate pancakes.
I proceeded through the hills just beyond the city to the Heptapyrgion fort and the Byzantine city walls. The sun was warm and the views were unreasonably good.
Dinner at Orea Ellas, a Cypriot restaurant full of locals, with friendly staff and an English menu with plenty of vegetable dishes. I ate hyacinth bulbs - which taste like olives but way stronger - with greens and potatoes, and for no clear reason got free cake, which happened to be vegan!
I finished the third of NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy last week. For me it was just so much about love, the diversity of love, how there are so many possible ways and reasons to feel and express and perform love (or not). We see familial love as a core theme of course, and reluctant love, unrequited love, love for and within a community, chosen family, forbidden, painful, passionate and physical, between different genders and the same, polyamorous, challenging, accepting, unconditional, unexpected.
Sure it's about magic and rock-people and apocalypse. But it's the most thorough and detailed and diverse exploration of love I've ever read.
Madness also involves talking to yourself right, because I just said "oh haha that's fucking hilarious" out loud to this docker container in a restaurant* in like a regular conversational voice.
* The same restaurant in which I was cry-laughing at tumblr (RIP) screenshots earlier, but fortunately there has been a complete staff and customer turnover since then.
Some part of me still thinks all my problems are going to go away when I make it to an island but intellectually I know that's only going to happen if I leave my fucking computer on the mainland.
Still, I live in hope. The ferry sails tomorrow evening!
I can't lie, a hotel room ever once in a while is a niiice luxury. Just one night before my ferry out. Especially after a few weeks of hostels and couchsurfing.
(There are no hostels in Kavala.. but I still booked the cheapest thing I could find and I did NOT shell out for a sea view room with a balcony.. yet here I am.)
The bus from Thessolaniki to Kavala takes about 2 hours express, and is €16.30. Thessolaniki bus station is out of town and huge and a bit confusing. It took me a while to find the ticket offices, but I wasn't stressed as there are plenty of buses throughout the afternoon. Ticket offices are divided by destination, so there's a lot of mostly Greek sign-reading involved.
It was late afternoon when I arrived in Kavala, and I had time to wander around the harbour before the sun set. I hiked up to the castle and found it closes at 1600. I ate in an Italian restaurant because the Greek ones don't really open til later, though I was still the only person there.
I saw the old aquaduct in the middle of town, that's cool
The next morning I went to the archaelogical museum first thing, because it closes at 1400. I spent less than 45 minutes there, it was €2, and the woman the the front desk was super surprised I wanted to visit.
An afternoon wandering around Kavala, and a visit to the castle. It's always nice when the cool tower is actually open. Health and safety related paraphernalia is minimal, and I wandered around the walls where a sharp gust might have sent me over. I still only managed to spend 45 minutes here though, and spent some time wandering the cute cobbled streets on the hill as well. I found a friendly cafe called Fouat who had vegan spinach pie, which I ate before I remembered to take a photo.
Later I went to another Italian place, expecting to get a cheeseless pizza, and lo and behold they had soy cheese! Under 'fasting' pizza on the menu, super subtle. It was good, too! Generous and cheesey. What a day.
Then I headed the port, more than an hour early but was able to board the ferry at once. Many comfortable looking seats were labelled 'economy' on the signs, but only the most crowded ones were where I was allowed to sit. There's about one power socket for every 2,000 people, and presumably directly over the engine because it's the loudest ferry I've ever been on. Oh well.
Ferry arrives in Mytilene, Lesvos, before 6am. I wandered along the harbour, ate my leftover pizza, and went into cafe Meli for coffee. They had no vegan pastries. Staff were very friendly, but seating wasn't super comfortable. I could leave my stuff there for a bit while I went to wander around and take pictures of the sunrise.
I relocated to Coffee Island next door for comfier seating and superior wifi when they opened.
The bus to Petra was at 11; there are two buses, the other being at 1330. It's not the easiest island to transit in the offseason.
The bus was €7, I bought a ticket at the bus station, and fortunately learnt the bus number because it didn't have a sign. In Kalloni we changed buses, and it was unclear what was going on. There were lots of old people yelling. I think that's just how Greek people talk to each other. Anyway I made it to Petra on schedule, but the bus didn't stop in the middle of town where it normally does. It was cloudy and started to drizzle by then.
The woman I'm renting my flat from came to the bus stop to pick me up in the car, but obviously I wasn't at the bus stop, and beat her home on foot. She was very upset I'd had to get cold and wet but actually it barely even qualified as rain by Scotland's standards.
And then I finally moved in to my new sea-view home. Turns out my hosts are beyond lovely, as well, and keep bringing me things like homemade marmalade, and iron-rich fig syrup (also homemade) oh and in the cupboard was also homemade local olive oil.
Still drizzly in Petra, but the sun came out for a wander around the town (village?). There are three :o supermarkets, and many cafes but only a couple are open. There's a big volcanic rock with a thing on it in the centre of town, just like Edinburgh. Well, this one is smaller and the thing is a church (closed) not a castle, but eh. Proportionally, the sea is the same distance away.
What's the opposite of FOMO? Choice paralysis? It's such a weird relief that I'm now in a place with nothing to do and no reasonable way to get anywhere else for a while.
And it rained torrentially this afternoon so my choice to stay in bed and not go hiking was totally vindicated. (Also I have a cold bleh.)
I witnessed an orange fall from a tree into the road today so I saved it from being squashed by cars and squashed it by hand when I got home. It was quite sour. I guess that's why the locals don't pick them all. I topped it up with water and drank it anyway.
Yesterday I was ill and stayed in bed all day. It also rained torrentially and thunderstormed so that was okay.
Today I'm still coughing and snuffling but mostly better. I hiked an easy trail from Petra, winding between the hills to Molyvos reservoir (which was looking quite dry) and around the back of Molyvos then along the coast to Efthalou. There's not much there, except famous hot springs. They're closed at this time of year of course, or on Sundays, or in the middle of the afternoon, take your pick. But two friendly cats live in the locked Ottomon dome which is right on the sea. They told me where to find the origin of the hot spring for an outdoor bathing experience. (Just kidding, I read that part on the internet.)
A pool forms in rocks right behind the dome wall, next to the sea. The spring water bubbles out of the sand barely a meter from the shoreline. The water is super hot, but the sea water periodically rushes in to the little pool formed from boulders, making a very pleasant water sitting experience indeed. The air temperature was about 14c, so I hung out there for a while. One of the cats came for a cuddle the whole time, then later watched over me while I got dried and dressed, helped me eat some crisps, and walked me up the hill to the gate.
I walked back around the cost all the way, via Molyvos castle this time. Obviously the castle was closed, but views from the top over the sea were nice, and also there was a big rainbow. As the sun started to set, Molyvos town on the hillside was dramatically lit with an orange glow, backed by dark stormy skies.
Fortunately, though clouds threatened all day, the worst of the rain held off.
I walked to the next village south, Anaxos. It's apparently a fake village that only exists for tourists, in the summer season. And true enough, it was a total ghost town. A little bit creepy, even. A few leash-less dogs around which always makes me nervous, and the only human I saw was a distinctly grouchy looking old man who just stared at me as I passed. I followed the coast around to get there, which involved a little rock balancing in some parts as there isn't a full beach or path. It was very calm and beautiful though. I scrambled up some hillside and found myself in the gardens of some fancy holiday cottages. I hopped a fence to get into the village, rather than going all the way back down and around. There's a nice beach, albeit desolate. I returned via the road, and saw some more humans on the way out. There are some volcanic rock formations around here, too, which is always pretty cool.
Today's adventures in Petra include finding a cafe full of middle-to-retired-aged English people, who clearly live here, complaining about immigrants taking jobs. I kid you not.
It's also very smoky, but Sarajevo hardened my lungs.
A lovely day out with my new Greek family. We did some shopping in Kalloni, went to the highest town on Lesvos, Agiasos to look at quaint streets and old buildings, had a meal in a traditional taverna - turns out the 40 days before christmas are a good time to eat with a Greek family who fast, because they were abstaining from meat! - so we got loads of amazing vegan dishes to share. I wouldn't have discovered this secretly vegan side of Greek cuisine by myself, I'm sure. We took the 8 year old to visit santa in Kalloni, and while he was doing that I went to the big supermarket.. where it turns out they have three kinds of vegan cheese sold by weight in the regular cheese counter! I've never seen that anywhere. So that was exciting. My hosts are so generous, and it was lovely of them to take me to parts of the island I wouldn't be able to get to by myself.
Greek pastries and coffee. Then I couldn't decide whether I wanted mashed potatoes and gravy or pizza. So I made both. And feasted for the next two days.
Living right next to the sea is amazing. Seeing it all blue and green and rolling every time I look out of the window. Hearing the waves crash rhythmically, perpetually, never stopping. I fucking love it.
I hiked from Petra, through the Ligona valley. I saw old watermills, impressive huge stone structures nestled among natural epic volcanic rock formations on both sides of the valley walls. I followed the valley to the spring. Then walked back around the mountain through the village of Petri. The return walk saw amazing views over Petra and the sea. At some point I could see all the way from Molyvos to Anaxos. I saw cats and sheeps and dogs. The sheep wear bells around their neck and you can hear them jangling and clanking across the mountains. It's a really beautiful place to hike.
I always want to buy bread from bakeries not supermarkets, but what do you do when you're in a country where bakeries just only have round bread loaves? Sometimes I just want a piece of bread with corners. Why is this too much to ask?
No slicing the sides off to make it square is not a solution, I still need crusts.
I walked south-ish from Petra for three and a half hours. Climbing the hill up to the village of Lafionas provided a constant supply of stunning views across Petra's bay. As I got higher, I could see Anaxos and Molyvos too.
But the really exciting part came when I finally went over/around the hill and lost the sea view, because this meant I was in a new part of the island I hadn't seen before. The road zigzags up the mountain for a while, with views of the valley and sheep fields and exciting rock formations, through dramatic pine forests.
Then over the next hill is like another world entirely. The pine trees are more or less gone, and there's a mini-valley filled with white rocks in every size, and all surfaces covered with a bright green moss. It was utterly peaceful, and despite the clearly human-carved mud track I was walking on, felt undisturbed.
As this hill descended, I had views of a new sea. The bay of Kalloni - the other side of the island! I could see Kalloni town, but bore west instead of east, and headed down to the village of Filia, nestled between the hills.
Filia is (I think) the only settlement on the island that still has a mosque, though it's not in use.
Eleni met me in the village, fed me a wonderful lunch, let me nap on the sofa and then woke me up with coffee and traditional quince sweets. She gave me a tour of the village, with a lot of detail about the history of every house, and we visited her mother, who also gave me traditional pastries.
I am endlessly lucky and spoiled and can't think of a better way to have ended the year.
